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- Fascism today - groups in Britain
Racist violence in the UK has grown to the point where,
according to a Home Office crime survey in 1992, about
130,000 incidents of racial harassment, abuse and violence
take place each year.
Most of these acts are probably random and sporadic. However,
there is clear evidence that wherever fascist organisations
are active, incidents of racial violence and harassment
rise dramatically.
Since the British National Party moved into its southeast
London headquarters in 1989, local organisations have
reported large increases in racial incidents, including
the murder of three black teenagers, Rohit Duggal, Rolan
Adams and Stephen Lawrence. Following Derek Beackon's
election win for the BNP in Tower Hamlets in 1993, racial
violence reportedly increased by 300 per cent in the area.
Fascist and nazi organisations are not a major political
force in the UK. They probably have fewer than 5,000 members
in dozens of different groups, which range from political
parties to small producers of race hate material.
However, support for far-right ideas is growing. One of
the reasons for this is people's disillusionment with
mainstream political parties and increased sympathy for
racist and nationalist ideas, which are no longer seen
as taboo in some national and local papers and on radio
and television.
The growth of xenophobic and racist debate has led to
some success for racial extremists at elections in certain
areas (such as Tower Hamlets and Newham in east London).
Extreme-right organisations are now electorally credible
on a limited basis but they have the potential to do much
better if proportional representation is ever introduced.
The main fascist threat in the UK comes from the small
number of people who carry out and incite violence and
hatred against minorities. In areas such as Scotland,
West Yorkshire, Lancashire, the East Midlands and south
and east London, assaults on black people and the desecration
of Jewish, Hindu and Moslem places of worship and cemeteries
are the result of an increased presence of organised racist
and neo-nazi groups.
The British National Party (BNP)
Members 600
Founded by John Tyndall in 1982
Prominent members; Richard Edmonds, Anthony Lecomber,
John Tyndall, Other key activists in the BNP are David
Bruce, a taxi driver, who has been one of Tyndall's most
trusted confidants for many years, John Peacock, who was
exposed in a World In Action television investigation
into nazi gun-runners in 1981, and the party's national
press officer, Michael Newland.
Publications; the BNP has two regular publications.
Its monthly newspaper, British Nationalist, sells around
4,000 copies. Its editor, John Morse, was prosecuted for
its content in 1986 and sent to prison with Tyndall. Michael
Newland is the production manager. Tyndall owns and edits
a monthly magazine called Spearhead.
The name is taken from the paramilitary group which he
and Colin Jordan, Britain's postwar nazi godfather, ran
between 1960 and 1962. It sells fewer than 2,000 copies
a month. There are some other publications such as the
glossy magazine, The Rune, produced by the BNP's influential
Croydon branch.
Key areas have recently been Scotland, the East
Midlands, London, especially east London, Milton Keynes
and Yorkshire.
Ideology and activity
The British National Party is currently the largest neo-nazi
group. Its policies include belief in Jewish conspiracy
theories and Holocaust denial, the forcible repatriation
of ethnic minorities including Jews, and support for loyalist
paramilitary terrorist organisations in Northern Ireland.
Despite standing in elections on a "law and order"
platform, the party's membership includes many people
with serious criminal convictions, including many of its
leaders, who have a wide range of convictions for racial
violence, incitement to racial hatred, arms and explosives
offences and other crimes.
The BNP also supports the quasi-scientific ideas of racial
eugenics and promotes the concept of racial purity through
selective breeding. Tyndall, since his days as leader
of the Greater Britain Movement, not only wants to deport
non-whites, but also supports sterilisation of people
of mixed race.
This policy comes directly from the German Nazis and Dr
Mengele, who sterilised women and some male prisoners
in Auschwitz. The BNP also hates gays; homophobia runs
riot in some of its publications.
The BNP achieved public notoriety following the election
victory of Derek Beackon on the Isle of Dogs in east London
in September 1993. Campaigning under the slogan "Rights
for Whites", the BNP successfully presented a semi-respectable
image to some local residents, saying that whites were
a minority facing discrimination in housing and employment
in the area. In fact all statistics show that the local
Asian population faces the highest level of discrimination
and attacks.
No other BNP candidates have ever succeeded in local or
national elections and Beackon lost his seat in the local
council elections of May 1994, although the BNP vote increased
by around 33 per cent to around 2,000 votes. The BNP faces
an uncertain future under the sole unelected leadership
of John Tyndall, a committed and active neo-nazi since
the 1950s.
The BNP has been unable to increase its membership and
several key regional activists and organisers have resigned
or become less involved with the party. The peace process
in Northern Ireland has confused BNP policy and the organisation
has been hit by revelations that activists in Scotland
and the Home Counties have been involved in drug dealing
to finance party activities.
Peacock and Edmonds have responsibility for the party's
international links through the international Odal Ring,
of which Peacock is the British representative. He takes
BNP members and supporters to rallies in various parts
of Europe each year and acts as host for overseas nazis
visiting Britain to attend BNP rallies and camps.
Edmonds is the British representative of the New European
Order, a group which has its origins in the wartime German
nazi SS. The three main overseas events that the BNP attends
are the international rally in Diksmuide every August,
the Rudolph Hess memorial demonstrations in Germany (Rudolf
Hess was one of Germany's prewar and wartime Nazi leaders
and died in prison in Berlin in 1987) and the celebration
of the birthday of the late Spanish dictator, General
Franco, in Madrid.
The BNP produced a well organised activists' handbook
in 1994. At various times the BNP has distributed copies
of Holocaust News, a publication in newspaper format which
denies that the Nazi Holocaust took place. It was first
produced by the National Front and reprinted and distributed
via the BNP and other antisemitic groups.
It is thought that as many as 100,000 copies have been
printed and circulated in the past seven years. The party's
bookshop and mail order business, which is run by Richard
Edmonds, brings in a large part of the BNP's income. It
sells a range of material including books, tapes and videos
produced by nazi and racist groups in Britain and around
the world.
Nick Griffin, former chair of the National Front, has
played an interesting role in the BNP. Although it is
claimed that he is no longer a member of any group, including
his own creation, the International Third Position, Tyndall
has allowed him to become editor of The Rune, the most
influential BNP publication, and to speak at BNP branch
meetings with an air of real authority.
While Tyndall denies that he is ready to retire, it would
appear that Griffin may not be prepared to wait for Tyndall
to go before making a bid for leadership of the BNP. The
civil war raging on the far right between the BNP and
Combat 18 / NSA may give him the opportunity he is seeking
to come up through the middle and take over, as he has
allies in both camps.
The National Front (NF)
[since spring 1995 one faction is also known as National
Democrats]
Members 300 (today). A total of 64,000 members
passed through the organisation between 1967 and 1979
and membership peaked at about 17,500 between 1971-74.
Founded 1967
Prominent members Ian Anderson, leader; Martin Wingfield
and John McAuley are leading activists.
Publications The NF publishes a monthly newspaper,
The Flag, which is often less offensively racist than
some mass circulation newspapers like The Sun. It also
publishes a glossy magazine, Vanguard, which started off
as a monthly but now appears infrequently.
Key areas the West Country, the West Midlands and
the Home Counties, north of London.
Ideology and activity
The National Front dominated the far right in the 1970s.
Many NF supporters were former Conservative voters who
had drifted away during Edward Heath's leadership. After
Margaret Thatcher's election victory in 1979 on a strong
right-wing and anti-immigration platform, many of them
transferred their support back to the Conservatives.
This put the NF into a near-terminal decline. For the
next decade the party suffered a series of splits, ideological
disputes and leadership struggles. The NF has started
to make a bit of a comeback since 1993, despite the lacklustre
leadership of Ian Anderson.
It presents itself as a moderate alternative to the more
overtly nazi BNP. It did relatively well in the 1994 local
council elections, gaining around 10 per cent of the vote
in some areas. With firmer leadership and a better organisational
structure, the NF could possibly again become a leading
fascist organisation.
In late 1994 the NF moved to a new headquarters. It was
previously based in Anderson's home in Newham, east London,
for almost ten years. Anderson earns a living as a printer.
The NF has benefited from around £150,000 from two
wills of dead fascists.
It is believed that the second of these, which brought
in around £110,000, is the main reason for the NF's
increased activity during 1994. In spring 1995 Ian Anderson
and what appears to be only half the membership gave up
the name National Front and renamed the party the National
Democrats, leading to a split.
Those staying loyal to the old NF name included John McAuley.
Both groups are fielding separate candidates in local
elections and neither is doing very well.
Combat 18 (C18)
Members 200 (approx)
Founded 1992
Prominent members Paul David "Charlie"
Sargent, Steve Sargent, Wilf Browning.
Publications include Red Watch, Putsch, The Order,
Thorwould, and a more recent magazine named Combat 18.
Key areas Combat 18 operates over a wider area
than any of the other nazi groups. It is active in Scotland,
Wales and Northern Ireland and strong in Yorkshire, the
Home Counties, London, the East Midlands and more recently
the West Midlands.
Because Combat 18's members come from already established
groups, they can ride on the backs of their home organisations
wherever they exist. When it has suited Combat 18, it
has absorbed whole BNP branches such as in Northern Ireland
during the latter part of 1994.
Ideology and activity
Combat 18 is a confrontational terrorist group formed
into close-knit cells. They include the more violent street
activists, members and supporters of groups such as the
BNP, Blood and Honour, the Ku Klux Klan and the British
National Socialist Movement, and fascist football hooligans
such as the notorious Chelsea Headhunters.
Combat 18 is an openly nazi organisation (the numbers
1 and 8 refer to the initials of Adolf Hitler). It believes
in attacking and murdering blacks, Jews, lesbians and
gays, and other minorities, and publishes hit lists containing
the names, addresses and telephone numbers of those it
views as "enemies of the white race" in a number
of publications (see above).
Combat 18 activists have been responsible for several
death threats, serious assaults and arson attacks over
the past four years, and have strong links with terrorist
loyalist paramilitary groups in Northern Ireland.
Combat 18's street leader, Paul David "Charlie"
Sargent, has convictions for drug dealing and trafficking.
There is evidence that the group is closely connected
with large-scale illegal drug imports and deals to raise
money for neo-nazi activities in the UK and abroad.
Combat 18's idea of forming small cell-like structures
with the capacity to carry out acts of terror has gained
growing support on the far right in recent years. The
ultimate aim of this strategy is to start a "race
war" on the streets.
One of the ideologues of this new thinking is Dr William
Pearce, the US nazi guru, whose National Alliance has
now been established in the UK. It calls itself the National
Socialist Alliance and it is a loose formation of nazi
skinhead groups as well as the more traditional nazi elite
group, the League of St George.
The ideas of targeting mixed race couples and fighting
a race war have also been developed and promoted by Louis
Beam, one of the most fanatical of America's new breed
nazis. A glossy magazine called The Oak, published independently
by John Cato and Paul Jeffries, has close links with Combat
18.
The Oak is modelled on Pierce's magazine National Vanguard.
Another publication purporting to come from a group called
the White Wolves contained bomb making diagrams and instructions
on how to attack and kill victims.
The magazine was thought to be a smokescreen for Combat
18, which at that time was under increasing pressure from
investigative journalists, MPs and some regional police
forces. Combat 18 is linked with a number of terrorist
groups in Sweden, such as VAM, who have robbed banks,
stolen military weapons, planted bombs and killed people.
It is also in contact with the German nazi terrorist group
Anti-Antifa, which has carried out at least two bombings
in which people have died.
National Socialist Alliance (NSA)
Members Nazi individuals and groups
Founded in summer 1994 as the political offshoot
of the paramilitary Combat 18
Publications supported by C18, Blood and Honour
and British Movement publications
Key areas In a series of closed regional meetings
around the country the NSA has taken over completely some
BNP branches, such as those in Northern Ireland, Halifax
and Oldham, and has made serious inroads into others.
Ideology and activity
The NSA has grown rapidly into a far-right umbrella organisation.
It has mopped up a large number of BNP activists as well
as absorbing the whole of Blood and Honour (see below)
and several small hard-core nazi groups such as sections
of British Movement and the British National Socialist
Movement and most of the British Ku Klux Klan (see below).
Other tiny groups such as the Aryan Resistance Movement
have also joined up. In the late summer of 1995 the BNP
and NSA/ C18 leaders and their followers were clashing
violently.
In a series of pamphlets, letters and magazine articles
the BNP accused C18 of being a state set-up, the aim of
which was to wreck the BNP and seize control of the far
right. The NSA/C18 countered with claims that the BNP
had sold out the nazi movement and the "white race".
Blood and Honour
Members Nazi skinhead bands
Founded by Ian Stuart Donaldson in 1987.
Publications Blood and Honour is the title of an
irregularly produced glossy publication around which nazi
skinhead bands and their followers are organised. National
socialist in orientation, the publication displays swastikas
and other nazi imagery prominently in its pages. British
Oi! supports Blood and Honour and operates from a PO Box
in Derby.
Key areas Active over the whole country.
Ideology and activity
Set up by nazi skinhead bands who had become dissatisfied
with the National Front, Blood and Honour is not a membership
organisation but comprises several thousand British followers
and an international following numbering tens of thousands.
Supporters come from groups across the fascist spectrum,
regardless of party differences. Blood and Honour sees
its role as uniting the nazi skinhead movement. Ian Stuart
Donaldson, the now deceased lead singer of the band Skrewdriver,
who set up Blood and Honour, gave this reason for wanting
to attract young supporters:
"Eventually there will be a race war and we have
to be strong enough in numbers to win it. I'll die to
keep this country pure and if it means bloodshed at the
end of the day, then let it be."
Recently having become ridden with infighting, Blood and
Honour has split into two factions, both producing a Blood
and Honour publication, one run by Combat 18 and the other
by Paul Burnley, the lead singer of the band No Remorse.
Blood and Honour supporters put on skinhead concerts (gigs)
across Britain in small venues such as pubs and working
men's clubs. Cloaked in secrecy, the concert details are
passed on to supporters by word of mouth, in the case
of smaller events, and are not even advertised in their
publications.
For larger events a redirection point is advertised to
prevent anti-fascists discovering the venue early enough
to stop the concert going ahead. This is due to the opposition
that they have faced from anti-fascists, which has resulted
in them making significant financial losses when venues
have pulled out at the last minute.
At larger events, anti-fascists have prevented Blood and
Honour supporters from getting from the redirection point
to the venue. In addition to the concerts and the publications
of the Blood and Honour movement, huge sums of money are
raised by the sale of records, compact discs, T-shirts,
badges, patches and other paraphernalia.
Blood and Honour generates a considerable amount of money
from outside Britain, where it has many more supporters.
Most of the material is sold by mail order or at concerts.
The absence of the sale of the material in shops is partially
due to the success of an anti-fascist campaign in 1989,
which resulted in the removal of Blood and Honour products
from a number of shops in London's Carnaby Street area.
Due to problems faced by what were two of the main record
companies and distributors of nazi skinhead records, based
in Germany and France, there is now a British-run record
label called I.S.D. records and a far larger company has
recently been set up in the United States called Resistance
Records.
Because of the nature of the nazi skinhead movement, bands
and the magazines come and go all the time. However what
remains is a hard core of very experienced activists who
in some cases have been involved in the movement since
the 1970s.
In the past Blood and Honour has had a close relationship
with the BNP. This has changed at an organisational, but
not at the supporters', level due to the intervention
of Combat 18. Recently, under the leadership of Combat
18, Blood and Honour has divided into four geographical
divisions:
East Anglia, Midlands, Northeast and Wales and the West
Country. All the main bands have members who have criminal
convictions, usually for racially motivated violence.
Blood and Honour Bands
English Rose - From Leicester, the lead singer
is currently serving an 18 month prison sentence.
Battlezone - This Chelmsford based based band is
unlikely to play any more as it has incurred the wrath
of Combat 18 in the struggle for control of Blood and
Honour.
British Standard - Glasgow based band, recently
reformed. Brutal Attack - Formerly known as ÔDead
Paki in the Gutter'.
Celtic Warrior - From Cardiff, this band was formed
by a surviving member of Violent Storm, a band that no
longer exists since its members were killed in a car crash
while travelling to an international Blood and Honour
concert.
Chingford Attack - Formed in 1994 by followers
of Combat 18. They have played in their home area in Waltham
Forest, London .
No Remorse - Front man for No Remorse is Paul Burnley,
who currently controls a Blood and Honour faction. One
of the best known bands, they play many concerts abroad
and in 1994 toured the United States.
Razors Edge - Birmingham based band who now have
former Skrewdriver band member Martin Cross playing with
them.
Section '88 - New band on the Blood and Honour
circuit.
Skrewdriver - The best known band has folded since
the death of its lead singer and founder of Blood and
Honour, Ian Stuart Donaldson, in a recent car crash.
Skullhead - Based in the North-East, Skullhead
is one the best known bands on the Ôscene'. They
are unable to play at the moment as one of the band members
is serving a prison sentence for violence.
Squadron - South London based band plays extensively
in Britain and Europe. There are many more bands than
these, new ones are formed all the time.
Symbols of the nazi skinhead movement
Blood and Honour Logo - incorporates the three
pronged swastika of the South African AWB.
Celtic Cross - One of the most popular symbols,
this has become a symbol of international fascism.
Odal Rune - Symbol used during nazi era in Germany.
Sieg Rune - Symbol used during nazi era in Germany.
Two together form the emblem of the Waffen SS.
Swastika - Unsurprising symbol of neo-nazis everywhere.
Wolf's Hook - Symbol used during nazi era in Germany.
International Third Position (ITP)
Members: under 100
Founded 1990
Prominent members The organisation is run by three
former National Front executive members, Nick Griffin,
a Cambridge graduate, Derek Holland, a Catholic fundamentalist,
and Colin Todd, a convicted thug who has travelled widely
for the organisation.
Publications Final Conflict
Key areas of activity are London and Kent.
Ideology and activity
The International Third Position is a small offshoot from
the former terrorist-oriented third position ("a
third position between capitalism and communism")
wing of the National Front. It is a nazi organisation
that espouses ecological and animal rights causes.
Members are encouraged to infiltrate green, anarchist
and hunt saboteur movements. The ITP's attempts to involve
nationalist groups, such as the Sons of Glendwyr in Wales,
in violence has given rise to strong suspicions over its
true aims and who really runs it.
A series of misfortunes suffered by groups overseas that
had dealings with the ITP have added to these suspicions.
The ITP produces a range of propaganda posters and stickers
including anti-abortion material and stickers supporting
despotic Middle Eastern regimes against the state of Israel.
It has very influential international connections, particularly
in Libya, Iraq, Spain, Croatia and the USA, and more recently
in the former Soviet bloc.
In the early 1990s Griffin formed links with David Irving,
the historical revisionist writer, and with the leaders
of the BNP and Combat 18.
Third Way
Members under 100
Founded 1989
Prominent members Patrick Harrington, leader, and
Graham Williamson, activist
Publications Third Way produces a rather scrappy
publication called Third Way. Its circulation, like the
group's membership, is tiny. It stole the name of an ecological
group, Green Wave, a few years ago and still produces
an occasional publication of that name.
Ideology and activity
Third way is another tiny offshoot from the NF, run by
another former NF leader, Patrick Harrington. Third Way
has dumped the ideological baggage of overt national socialism
in favour of trying to appear respectable. Instead it
concerns itself with philosophical issues, such as attempting
to identify true European culture and identity.
Third Way claims to support separatism rather than racism.
It claims it is not antisemitic and has links with extremist
black separatists and anti-Zionist Jews. Third Way and
its former partners in the ITP also maintain strong links
with a number of Islamic fundamentalist groups, such as
the Islamic Party in Britain and the Algerian Islamic
Front.
Harrington is assisted by Graham Williamson, who has run
local issue campaigns such as support for local shops
and demands for school crossings, as well as animal rights
campaigns in Essex and East London.
One of the group's best activists outside London, David
Owens, now based in Leeds, defected to the BNP in 1994,
leaving a large gap in Third Way's provincial organisation.
Its main areas of activity are London and Kent.
Third Way's international links are with far-right groups
in Belgium and France, and more recently in Eastern Europe
and Italy. Patrick Harrington has travelled to the USA
on a number of occasions where he met black nationalist
extremists including the foreign minister of Louis Farrakhan's
Nation of Islam organisation.
He also has connections with a tiny extreme Jewish Orthodox
sect, which supports "separate development"
Ð a form of apartheid. Both Harrington and Nick Griffin
of the ITP have kept in contact with two exiled Italian
terrorists, Massimo Morsello and Roberto Fiore, who have
lived in Britain since the early 1980s.
They were allowed to stay here as recompense for helping
MI6 in the Middle East. They left Italy after the bombing
of Bologna railway station in 1981, in which 86 people,
including two British students, died and more than 200
were injured.
The exiled Italians were wanted not for the actual bombing
but for their role in acting as messengers between a section
of the Italian Secret Service, which was involved in the
bombing, and fascist terrorists.
The English Nationalist Movement (ENM)
Members under 100
Founded 1994
Publications Hiding behind a series of false names
and a box number, the ENM produces an occasional publication,
The Crusader. It has also resurrected Rising Books, the
political soldiers' publishing and distribution organisation.
Ideology and activity
The English Nationalist Movement was set up by the ITP.
Its programme is almost identical to that of the NF political
soldiers, the forerunner of Third Way and the ITP.
However the ENM differs fundamentally in its position
on the Middle East. It has moved away from the political
soldiers' support for the PLO and instead turned towards
the Iranian-backed Hamas movement known internationally
for its terrorist links.
The membership of this shadowy outfit is thought to be
even smaller than those of Third Way and the International
Third Position. Those behind the ENM were almost certainly
leading lights in the ITP.
Ku Klux Klan (KKK)
Members up to 400 supporters in the UK, mostly
drawn from the membership of other fascist organisations.
Founded 1990
Prominent members A key British member and recruiter
was Ian Stuart Donaldson until his death in 1993. One
main Klan organiser is Allan Beshella, a convicted child
molester.
Ideology and activity
The KKK has been in the news several times during the
1990s following the violent activities in Wales of Allan
Beshella. Beshella trained with and organised for the
KKK in the United States in Texas and California. Before
returning to Britain, his birthplace, he was arrested
for possession of an arsenal of modern weapons.
The British National Socialist Movement (BNSM)
Members under 200
Founded 1968 by Colin Jordan
Prominent members The man thought to be its leader
is Danny Tolan from south London. Others involved are
Kevin Watmough and Stephen Frost from Yorkshire and Gordon
Jackson.
Publications The main publication, The Sunwheel,
has been joined by a number of other small circulation
hardline nazi news sheets and magazines in the past two
years.
Key areas British National Socialist Movement is
based in Yorkshire, Scotland, West Midlands and London.
Ideology and activity
The British National Socialist Movement is a small,
semi-underground organisation. It comprises the hard core
of the British Movement, which was formed in the 1960s
by Colin Jordan, the godfather of British nazism.
Jordan still commands respect as an ideological guru to
the British postwar neo-nazi movement and contributes
to the BNP publication, Spearhead. The BNSM's core membership
consists of extremely violent individuals who have been
involved with illegal arms and drugs and in armed robberies.
In the 1990s a number of tiny variations of this group
appeared, often containing members of Colin Jordan's original
National Socialist Movement, which preceded the British
Movement in the years 1962-68.
The organisation has a uniform but some of its younger
members have been in trouble with the leadership by wearing
it publicly over the past four years. This should have
led to prosecutions under the 1936 Public Order Act, which
makes it illegal to wear political uniforms in public.
The idea of self help is very strong among the members.
They have set up Project 2,000, which hopes to buy land
so that members can set up US nazi-style communes. Combat
18 and the National Socialist Alliance have also promoted
this idea since 1993.
At one time the BNSM held regular social events to raise
money towards this project and for setting up its own
publishing operation.
League of St George (LSG)
Founded 1973/4
Prominent members John Harrison, a security officer
and shop steward at the Ford factory in Dagenham, is currently
responsible for running the LSG on a day to day basis.
The League of St George's leadership formerly included
a millionaire tax exile, Robin Rushton, Michael Griffin,
who had strong links with the right wing of the provisional
IRA, and Ludmilla Baack, alias Lucy Roberts, who had links
with the wartime SS in Europe. Keith Thompson, who was
exposed as a Searchlight informer in the early 1990s,
still appears to be connected with Steven Books, the LSG's
mail order outlet. Roger Clare, who produces Target, is
a long-time nazi with international ties. He currently
lives in Kent, but has lived and been active for the far
right in New Zealand and South Africa.
Publications People involved with the LSG produce
Target, a hit list bulletin, which claims to be "the
voice of Pro Fascist Action". The LSG's official
publication is League Sentinel. It is far less impressive
than its predecessors, League Review and National Review,
which provided a debating forum for national socialist
ideas and plans for current and future activities from
the time of the League's formation in the mid-1970s
Key areas Based in London.
Ideology and activity
The League of St George is a small and highly secretive
organisation, which was formerly very influential on the
European nazi scene. It was an elite organisation, which
helped provide safe houses for wanted neo-nazi terrorists
and had links with aging nazis from Germany's Nazi era.
Hate groups and propagandists
Apart from the larger or more openly nazi and fascist
groups mentioned above, there exists a multitude of tiny
groups and individuals, who publish tens of thousands
of books, booklets, leaflets and stickers every year.
They are typified by people like Lady Jane Birdwood, who
picked up two convictions at the Old Bailey in the 1990s
for producing and distributing racist and antisemitic
material. Her organisations, Self Help and British Solidarity,
publish an occasional paper called Choice.
Birdwood works with a small circle of racists and antisemites
such as Joy Page and Dr Kitty Little. She inherited a
massive card index from Edward Martell, the far-right
Conservative trade union basher. He ran a scab publishing
operation in the 1950s.
Another veteran antisemite is Rosine de Bouneviaille,
a leading member in the League of Empire Loyalists and
the NF, when it was run by A K Chesterton in its early
days. She continues to publish the hate magazine Candour
and has used her large Hampshire home to host various
far-right functions and activities. She is a traditional
Catholic.
The British Section of the Viking Youth used her home
as its address. The Viking Youth was based on its German
counterpart Wiking Jugend, direct descendants of the Hitler
Youth. Wiking Jugend was banned in 1994. Don Martin runs
the British League of Rights, a group with strong ties
with anti-Jewish bodies in Canada, South Africa and Australia.
He also runs Bloomfield Books, which sells such classic
works of anti-Jewish hate as The Protocols of the Elders
of Zion. Another group with strong links in South Africa
is the White Rhino Club, run from Kent by Alan Harvey,
who publishes South African Patriot in Exile. Harvey has
strong links with Ulster loyalists and a wide range of
far-right and racist groups in Britain.
When the club was first formed, it had many members who
had fought as mercenaries for white regimes in southern
Africa. Michael Walker, a former London organiser of the
National Front, who now lives and works in Germany, uses
his very infrequent glossy quasi-intellectual publication,
Scorpion, to disseminate the ideas of the traditional
extreme right and the new right internationally.
He organises conferences in London with the assistance
of Patrick Harrington of the Third Way and Richard Lawson
of the nazi cultural group Iona at least once every two
years. Scorpion and its ideas are much favoured by elements
of the extreme right in the former Soviet bloc and Italy.
The now very old former supporters of Sir Oswald Mosley's
Blackshirt movement still meet twice a year for dinners
and after dinner speeches and lectures. They maintain
a publication called Comrade, which attempts to rewrite
their history with the assistance of a number of young
academics and undergraduates.
David Irving, the Holocaust revisionist writer, still
uses the name of the group he formed in 1980, the Clarendon
Club, as a smokescreen for his speaking engagements in
Britain. His meetings are guarded, attended and organised
mostly by members of the BNP and Combat 18. He also set
up a political operation called Focal Point.
It has had a very low profile, but still appears to exist.
Irving publishes a broadsheet-style paper, Action Report,
which is one of the best produced papers on the British
far right. He is currently banned from visiting several
countries because of his extreme views. Irving works very
closely with Antony Hancock from Sussex, who is one of
the world's leading publishers and printers of nazi material
and material that denies the Holocaust.
The Hancock family have their roots in the Mosley movement
and Monday Club. They have serviced most of Britain's
far-right groups by carrying out their printing when other
printers refused. Hancock has convictions for political
activities and for fraud, and is extremely well connected
to nazi and racist groups throughout the world.
Hancock works under a series of false names and has used
a number of different names for his companies.
Book clubs
A series of book clubs spread nazi and racist ideas across
a wide spectrum of the far right in Britain. Almost all
of them buy material from Dr William Pierce in the USA.
It consists of nazi and racist publications, tapes and
videos, including material on guerrilla warfare and bomb
making manuals.
Colin Jordan distributes various items including a newssheet,
Gothic Ripples, which takes its name from the publication
of Arnold Leese. Leese was a prewar British fascist leader
who advocated the use of gas chambers before the nazis
ever put the idea into practice. He was so extreme that
he referred to Sir Oswald Mosley as a "kosher fascist".
He died in the 1950s leaving Jordan to carry on his work.
The League of St George runs its own book service, Steven
Books. John Cato and Paul Jeffreys run Life Rune Books
and Combat 18 has Resurgam Publications.
These clubs and others, such as Aurora publications, peddle
hate material and bomb manuals. Pierce runs a short wave
radio station which transmits to Europe. Life Rune Books
publishes the station's frequencies but the main advertisement
appears in the BNP magazine Spearhead.
Gary Lauck, a German American, runs the NSDAPÐAO,
(National Sozialistische Deutsche Arbeiter Partie Ð
Auslands Organisation/National Socialist German Workers'
Party - Overseas Organisation) from the USA.
He publishes White Power in several European languages,
including Russian, and distributes computer discs, which
contain coded messages, to his comrades in Europe and
bomb manuals, which are simple to follow and therefore
particularly dangerous.
Fringe Groups
The Church of the Creator (COTC) was set up in
the USA by Ben Klassen, a millionaire fascist who killed
himself in 1993. It is a pagan church, which believes
in the Norse gods of the Vikings and denounces both Christians
and Jews.
It has a small number of disciples in Britain who use
the title of Reverend. One of its activists is Christina
Yianni, alias Christine Johns. She is a graduate who was
once a very active member of the BNP but now appears to
devote herself to the COTC.
Among the COTC's other key personnel in Britain is Walter
Carr, a member of the BNP, lifelong nazi and personal
friend of Colin Jordan. Alan Milnes from Cumbria is another
leading activist, dividing his time between the BNP and
the COTC.
The COTC's publication, Racial Loyalty, calls for "racial
holy war", sometimes abbreviated to RAHOWA. Some
of its activities have been financed by old British nazis
at the request of key nazis in the USA.
The Aryan Resistance Movement (ARM) is run from
the West Midlands by Adrian Blundell, a young skinhead
thug, and his partner Cathy Murphy. They have drawn much
of their inspiration from Max Wagegg, an old German nazi
soldier who lives in Birmingham. Murphy and Blundell have
operated with Blood and Honour and the BNP. They have
attended at least one camp organised by the BNP's John
Peacock.
Recruiting techniques of fascist organisations
The recruiting techniques of the various British groups
vary but many members join in response to the stickers
and leaflets that the groups distribute. The British National
Party's favourite tactic is to select an inner city area
where some racial tension already exists, wait for a physical
clash to take place and move in, in its wake.
Another technique is to start a high profile campaign
against the building of a mosque or Hindu temple. The
most cynical of the BNP's campaigns are those about law
and order initiatives. Although many BNP members have
convictions for all kinds of serious and violent crimes,
the BNP moves in claiming to defend law and order and
promising to protect the local white community.
Combat 18 recruits largely by word of mouth as it is a
clandestine movement. It has a fair following among some
of the most violent football hooligans, from Glasgow Rangers
to the Chelsea Headhunters.
The National Police Intelligence Squad, which monitors
football violence, has graphic evidence showing the involvement
of many BNP and C18 members in leading activities that
end in serious disorder and injury, both in Britain and
abroad. |
| Contact : bernard.omahoney@bernardomahoney.com |
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