FASCISM

Anti-Fascism

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43 Group

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After the war there was a resurgence of Fascist activity in London. The apprentice hairdresser Vidal Sassoon became the youngest member of the 43 Group, a band that was composed principally of Jewish ex-servicemen and women who used physical means to oppose the racialists. During this time he often carried a cosh or a razor blade with him.

Individuals who furnished the Group with funds were the gangster Jack Spot Comer (n Jacob Colmore) (1912-1996) and the entertainer Bud Flanagan (n Chaim Reuben Weintrop) (1896-1968).

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The Anti-Nazi League

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In 1978 the Anti-Nazi League organised The Rock Against Racism festival in Victoria Park and then a march in which 150,000 people may have participated.

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Searchlight

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Searchlight is an international anti-fascist magazine that was founded in 1975 by Maurice Ludmer, a Communist. Some of its material came from moles who had started as believing members of the Far Right but with time had come to appreciate that what they were doing was wrong.

Searchlight evolved into the charity Hope Not Hate.

Address: P.O. Box 1576, Ilford, 1G5 0NG

See Also: MAGAZINES

Website: www.searchlightmagazine.com

The British National Party

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In the mid-1970s fascism's popularity peaked. However, this fell away: many of its supporters switched to a Conservative Party that had been reinvigorated by the leadership of Margaret Thatcher; the extreme right became plagued by factionalism; opposition to it was organised at a local level.

The National Front was co-founded by John Tyndall.

In 1980 Tyndall left the National Front. He set up a new group that he initially called the New National Party. Subsequently, it was renamed the British National Party.

In 1993 Derek Beackon, a party member, became its first elected representative when he won the Millwall ward of Tower Hamlets.

In 1995 Nick Griffin left the National Front. At Tyndall's invitation he took a senior position in the B.N.P..

During the 1997 general election the B.N.P. fielded 57 Parliamentary candidates, of whom 54 lost their deposits. The party garnered a total of 35,000 votes.

In the 1999 European election the B.N.P. received over 100,000 votes, 1% of the total.

In 1999 Griffin ousted Tyndall as the B.N.P.'s leader and assumed the position himself. He ensured that it toned down its more outrageous pronouncements.

During the 2001 general election Griffin stood as the B.N.P.'s Parliamentary candidate at Oldham West & Royton. The town had experienced racial tensions that had led to rioting. He won 16.4% of the votes that were cast.

In 2002 the B.N.P. won three seats on Burnley Council and one on Blackburn. This was a major breakthrough for it.

In the 2005 general election the B.N.P. contested 119 seats. The party secured almost 193,000 votes.

Following the 2006 local elections, the B.N.P. held 46 council seats. It won eleven on Barking & Dagenham Council. However, some of them either defected or were expelled from the party. By 2010 in longer had any councillors in the borough.

In the 2009 European elections both Griffin and Andrew Brons won seats in the European Parliament. Labour's support in the north-west had slumped. This allowed Griffin to be returned under the proportional representation system.

In 2009 the Equality & Human Rights Commission asked the B.N.P. to change its constitution so as to allow non-white people from joining the party. The party's leadership declined the request. The Commission stated that it would bring a suit against the party. The leadership responded by stating that it would change the constitution to allow the admission of non-white people.

Location: Millwall, Isle of Dogs, E14 8JS

Barking & Dagenham Town Hall, Town Hall Square, 1 Clockhouse Avenue, Barking IG11 7LU

David Copeland

In 1999 a nail bomb exploded in Electric Avenue, Brixton, which was a busy street market. Some people were badly injured. A week later a second one went off in Brick Lane. A week after that a third detonated in The Admiral Duncan, a gay pub on Old Compton. It killed three people and injured dozens of others. Of the dead, two were a heterosexual couple. The woman was pregnant.

The Met apprehended David Copeland, a Neo-Nazi. He was tried and convicted.

Location: The Admiral Duncan, 54 Old Compton Street, W1D 4UD

The Imperial Fascist League

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In the 1930s Arnold Leese (d.1956) led the Imperial Fascist League. The organisation was ardently anti-Semitic. Leese viewed Mosley as a moderate, terming him a kosher fascist. Sir Oswald responded by describing Leese and his associates as pygmies posing in the jackboots of dead giants.

Leese bequeathed a house in Ladbroke Grove to Colin Jordan (1923-2009), who was the leader of the National Socialist Movement and the British Movement.

The National Socialist Movement

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Colin Jordan (1923-2009) was a graduate of the University of Cambridge. In 1956 he acquired his first conviction while involved a protest that was being staged the League of Empire Loyalists, which was fascist front organisation. Subsequently, he founded the White Defence League. This he ran from a house in Notting Hill that Arnold Leese (d.1956) bequeathed him. The organisation participated in the Notting Hill race riots.

In 1960 Jordan merged the League with the National Labour Party to form the British National Party. His open racism proved too much for some of his associates within the party. At the start of 1962 he and John Tyndall left the Party. They took with them Spearhead, which was intended to be a paramilitary organisation. In April Jordan formed the National Socialist Movement. Its headquarters were raided.

In July 1962 the Movement held a rally in Trafalgar Square. Jordan spoke below a banner that read Free Britain From Jewish Control . Hundreds of its followers were present. Their opponents numbered several thousand. The situation degenerated into a riot. Jordan and his deputy Tyndall were arrested. They were prosecuted over the affray. They and a number of their associates were convicted, under the Public Order Act of 1936, of having organised and equipped a paramilitary force for political ends. Jordan was imprisoned for two months and Tyndall for six.

During the summer of 1962 George Lincoln Rockwell (1918-1967), the leader of the American Nazi Party, entered Britain illegally. The two men issued the Cotswold Declaration, which announced the creation of World Union of National Socialists, of which Jordan was the World F hrer.

During the autumn Jordan and his colleagues were prosecuted over Spearhead. They were convicted. Jordan was given a nine-month sentence.

In 1963, while Tyndall was in prison, Jordan married Fran oise Dior, a niece of the fashion designer Christian Dior, who had been engaged to Tyndall. The two men separated politically, dividing the extreme far right.¹

During the mid-1960s supporters of the Movement carried out over 30 arson attacks on Jewish-owned properties in London. The perpetrators were identified by the police, who were supported by the 62 Group, a Jewish defence organisation. Jordan was not prosecuted with regard to the arson attacks. His wife was arrested for inciting arson attacks on two London synagogues. She was interested in the occult.

In 1965 Jordan and his followers disrupted the 1965 Leyton by-election. He and his supporters invaded an election. During the incident he was thumped off the stage by the Labour Defence Secretary Denis Healey.

Jordan s 1967 leaflet The Coloured Invasion attacked Black and Asian and immigrants. He was prosecuted for it under the Public Order Act of 1936. He was convicted and imprisoned for eighteen months. In 1968, while he was still serving his sentence, the Movement was reborn as the British Movement. Upon his release he formally assumed the party's leadership. He allowed a number of his supporters to set up the National Socialist Group. This aspired to be a terrorist group. Its members formulated a plan to assassinate Harold Wilson the then Prime Minister. The group was exposed. It broke up.

In 1975 Jordan was prosecuted for having stolen three pairs of women's red knickers from a branch of Tesco. He was convicted and fined 50. Subsequently, Jordan stood down as the leader of the British Movement. His successor was Michael McLaughlin, a milkman from Liverpool.

Jordan faded to the peripheries. He lived in North Yorkshire where he wrote books and pamphlets. In 2001 charges were brought against him for having published material that was likely to stir up racial hatred. The presiding judge ruled that a heat condition that Jordan had rendered him unfit to stand trial.

¹. The Jordans divorced in 1967.

Newspaper Selling

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It is reputed that the rival National Front and Socialist Workers Party newspaper sellers on Brick Lane used to help each other out with change.

Location: Brick Lane, E1 6RF (purple, yellow)

Private Armies

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In the early 1970s Sir Walter Walker (1912-2001) sought to raise a private army through the offices of The Daily Telegraph newspaper. The publication was taken aback at this and made its displeasure known.

Location: 135-141 Fleet Street, EC4A 2BJ. The Daily Telegraph Building. (red, purple)

David Backhouse 2024