National Front

For the French party, see Front National. Other uses, see National Front (disambiguation).

National Front
Political position	British nationalism Indigenism Moderate
Leader	Tony Martin (Chairman) Chris Jackson (Nominating Officer) Nick Walsh (Treasurer)
Country	United Kingdom
Existence	1967–present
Headquarters	Kingston upon Hull, England
Affiliation	none
Colours	Red, white, blue
Website	https://nationalfront.org/

The National Front (also known as the NF) is a British nationalist party which was founded in 1967 and continues to exist today. The Front were at their peak during the 1970s under the leadership of John Tyndall and for a time were the fourth largest party in the United Kingdom. They were famous for political marches and taking up an unabashed defence of what they regarded as the group interests of the native peoples of the country, opposing demographic genocide. Over the years, many political parties have been founded as break-aways of the National Front, including the British National Party.

The party began its existence as a merger of three prior existing groups—the League of Empire Loyalists, British National Party and Racial Preservation Society—under the leadership of A. K. Chesterton, cousin of prolific author G. K. Chesterton. Throughout their existence, the party had to endure violence at their parades from Trotskyist terrorists and foreigners. For a time during the 1970s, it appeared as though the party may break through, however Margaret Thatcher's false promises robbed them of that. Following that time the party was marred by destructive internal disputes between populist conservatives and third positionists. Since around 2005 the party has been recovering and rebuilding itself.

Etymology

One variant of the National Front flag

The origins of the name of the party date back as far as 1944, from a short-lived organisation founded by A. K. Chesterton known as the National Front after Victory Group. They were opposed to the all encompassing Jewish supremacist quest for full spectrum domination, however, they advocated a Britain First policy, rather than serving the Axis forces (this is somewhat similar to the view of Charles Maurras in regards to France and it's politics). Chesterton himself served in the British Army in Africa during the Second World War and the plan was to create a nationalist party after victory.

Other prominent members of the group were Major-General J. F. C. Fuller, the Earl of Portsmouth and Henry Williamson, surrounding the Truth journal. The British People's Party patronised by the Duke of Bedford and the British League of Ex-Servicemen and Women (a nationalist alternative to the establishment's Royal British Legion) were affiliated under the umbrella of the National Front after Victory Group for a time. This group floundered but part of the name was revived by Chesterton for this party in 1967, in the form of the National Front.

History

A. K. Chesterton was the first chairman of the National Front. The NF was founded by A. K. Chesterton as a merger between his League of Empire Loyalists and the British National Party (1960). It was soon joined by the Greater Britain Movement, whose leader John Tyndall became the Front's chairman in 1972. In 1982, Tyndall left the National Front to form the new British National Party. 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 one part of the party into the National Democrats (United Kingdom), while another part retained the National Front name.

Foundation of the National Front

The National Front was founded by the merger of three existing groups: the League of Empire Loyalists, the British National Party and the Racial Preservation Society. The most significant of these was the LEL, led by A. K. Chesterton, which was in existence from 1954 until 1966. Chesterton—who like his famous cousin G. K. Chesterton, was a capable literary man—had been associated with the British Union of Fascists for a time, but as he got older had become more of a traditional conservative (though remaining skeptical of world "money power"). The LEL had been founded to defend British national interests and to oppose multiracialism via immigration, in the knowledge of the conflicts caused by such experiments in the United States and South Africa (Chesterton had first-hand experience of the latter).

The LEL had been an activist group rather than standing for elections and was associated with elements of the Conservative Party. This led to a split by those who had more sympathy for the Labour Party, the welfare state and a kind of socialistic economics, but were still patriotic and opposed to the demographic genocide of the people through immigration. This faction included John Bean, John Tyndall and Martin Webster amongst others. Some of the groups they founded merged to become the old BNP, which under the leadership of Bean joined the NF project to provide some unity in the movement. The RPS meanwhile was a local publishing society in Sussex. The first National Front meeting was held on 7 February 1967, where 250 patriots made their way through a violent Marxist mob on their way to the hall.

The Greater Britain Movement was permitted to join the NF later in 1967, once Chesterton had become convinced that Tyndall had moderated his position (though Andrew Fountaine was strongly opposed to this, partly due to a personal rivalry with Tyndall). After standing at a by-election in 1968, Fountaine and Chesterton came into conflict also, leading to the departure of the former. For the rest of the decade, the NF protested against communism and were sometimes physically attacked by their enemies. Following worse results than expected in 1970, Chesterton was pressured into stepping down as leader. A compromise candidate John O'Brien was chosen as his replacement. A former Conservative Party member, O'Brien soon attempted to make the NF a populist Powellite party and tried to expel the argued fascist (broad sense) orientated Tyndall-Webster faction. This failed, so in 1972 he left with supporters to found the National Independence Party.

Tyndall era, 1970s prominence

John Tyndall became the chairman in 1972 and the party soon put aside internal differences, enjoying a boost in popular support, galvinised largely by Idi Amin's expulsion of the South Asians from Uganda: 27,200 of which were permitted to settle in the United Kingdom by the corrupt government. During this time the NF became a nationally operating organisation with many new members and gained some experience from Monday Club defectors. At a by-election in West Bromwich, Martin Webster recieved 16 % of the vote. The NF also came out against joining the European Economic Community—which would eventually become the European Union—attacking Prime Minister Edward Heath as a traitor for surrendering national sovereignty. Solidarity with Ulster unionists following a mainland PIRA bombing campaign in 1974 and denouncing communist influence over certain trade unions filled out the rest of the policy.

The influx of new members also led to a now familiar scenario: Conservative defectors who agreed with the line of Enoch Powell and were disillusioned with the liberalism of their old party wanted to make the NF more "acceptable" to a middle-class audience. Meanwhile, Tyndall's leadership largely rested on the backing of a youthful, working-class base who savoured radicalism as a way to show contempt for the spineless "elites" who were betraying the British people. A general election was held in February 1974, where the NF recieved 0.2% of the vote. Later in the year, the BBC screened a propaganda film against the NF, manipulating Tyndall's earlier involvement with the NSM to portray the party as so-called "Nazis". The populist John Kingsley Read thus became chairman for the October 1974 election, where the NF gained 0.4% of the vote.

Red violence against the Front increased in 1974 also, famously at Red Lion Square. The IMG, a Trotskyist group under foreign terrorist Tariq Ali incited attacks on a peaceful march in the Red Weekly. Foreign invaders and degenerated '68-style students were the main useful idiots. The riot that ensued between the reds and the police gained front-page news coverage and cost the life of one red. Other Trots such as Gerry Healy of the WRP ramped up anti-patriotic rhetoric, portraying the National Front as on the cusp of a state-backed anti-communist seizure of power like Pinochet in Chile or the military government in Greece.

Similar scenes occured in 1977, when Webster organised an anti-muggers protest in Lewisham. During this, Trotskyist SWP fronts and Black chauvinists attacked police and their horses with bricks, bottles and iron bars. Trots were indifferent to victims of Black muggings because they were using foreigners as a tool to undermine society. 300 reds and foreigners were arrested, yet the mass media the next day tried to blame the NF.

After dissapointing election results in 1974, factionalism returned to the NF. Eventually the Tyndall-Webster group returned to power in 1976, with populist Read leaving to found the National Party. Around this time Searchlight, a Ziono-communist magazine led by Gerry Gable, a former member of the Communist Party was founded to attack patriots. This, as well as other media cases, was a specifically Jewish supremacist attack on British nationalists, eliciting more focus on resisting Zionists and efforts to publish research questioning their accounts of WWII. Yet despite the press attempts to portray the National Front as so-called "Nazis", membership in groups such as the League of Saint George was proscribed by Webster for NF members. The case where the Front came to the defence of Robert Relf in 1976—who had been jailed for advertising his house for sale only to native English people—gained much attention and many new members. That year they gained 20% of the vote in local elections in Leicester. The following year, they became the fourth largest party in the country, beating the Liberal Party in many local election seats, with the aforementioned Lewisham march in the headlines

Flag Group and Political Soldier

Going into the 1979 election there was confidence, with widespread strikes in the Winter of Discontent, anti-communism high due to the Cold War and unrest at the foreign invasion. They fielded over 300 candidates, yet failed to get a single Member of Parliament elected, though their vote went up to 0.6%. Some reds attempted to attribute this to the violent campaign by the Trotskyist SWP's ANL and propaganda through so-called Rock Against "Racism", which played on contemporary rock and punk subculture, to which the NF responded with Rock Against Communism. In reality however, Margaret Thatcher saying to the public that she understood their concerns about the foreign invasion, her strong leadership qualities and anti-communism saw the public turn to the Conservatives instead. Despite some sympathetic nods from Alan Clark, Thatcher's reign turned out to be a Churchill-like pseudo-patriotic hoax. Jews were hugely over represented in her cabinet (25% of the posts), Keith Joseph was her chief ideologue and neo-liberal economic policies similar to post-Perestroika Russia were enacted.

The aftermath of the poor result left Tyndall isolated, not only from the populists, but also Webster. The latter dispute arose due to tactics; Webster felt that skinheads and football firms were suitable patriotic manpower in response to red and foreign violence, while Tyndall felt this damaged "respectability" among the public. Andrew Brons became a compromise chairman in 1980, while Tyndall left to form the New National Front, which became the British National Party in 1982. By 1983, it was the turn of Webster to be ousted, both the populists and third positionists were against him, so he founded the short-lived Our Nation group, before semi-retirement from politics.

Within the Front a new generation was emerging; the conservative populists under the Flag Group and the third positionists under Political Soldier. Brons stepped down as chairman in 1984—though remained within the party—making way for Martin Wingfield editor of the The Flag. The populist Flag Group also included Ian Anderson and Joseph Pearce, a leader of the Young National Front. Meanwhile, the more radical Political Soldier faction had developed a revolutionary and mystical worldview around the Rising publication under Derek Holland, which also included Nick Griffin and Patrick Harrington. The PS faction were associated with Evola-inspired Italians exiled in London who had fled Rome, belonging to the Terza Posizione under Roberto Fiore.

The entirely different worldviews of the two groups led to open conflict. A split into two groups calling themselves the National Front occured in 1986. The Political Soldier faction, known as the Official National Front under the triumvirate of Holland, Griffin and Harrington on the one hand and the Flag Group faction calling itself the National Front Support Group on the other. In the following years, in terms of membership, the Flag Group NF was biggest, followed by Tyndall's BNP and then the Political Soldier NF. The latter did not focus as much on electoral politics however and was trying to form elite cadres. Violence from reds continued (especially Red Action and AFA), but most of the problems during this time was because of internal disputes. Between the years 1989—90 the Political Soldiers ended, Holland and Griffin left for the International Third Position, while Harrington founded the Third Way. Ian Anderson also became leader of the Flag Group NF.

National Democrats and decline

Spurred on by the gains of the Front National under Jean-Marie Le Pen in France, Anderson attempted to keep the National Front on a similar track ideologically. However, his personal failings, including financial indiscretions, saw the British National Party under John Tyndall become the leading party of the movement by the mid-1990s. Anderson, feeling the NF name had negative connotations, adopted the name National Democrats instead. Some disagreed however and maintained the name, but this group were largely insignificant dissidents with the rise of the BNP, where many former National Front members were to be found. The Front has experienced some growth since the late 2000s, partly due to defections from the BNP where former members (such as Richard Edmonds) have fallen out with Nick Griffin's leadership, and the number of NF candidates run has increased.

A nationalist blogger hoped that the NF would be able to do for Britain what the Golden Dawn had done in Greece. Following the unexpected resignation of Ian Edward in mid-2013, Kevin Bryan was elected National Chairman on 31 August 2013. A former BNP organizer for Newark-On-Trent, Bryan stressed the importance of balancing the exclusive focus on electoral politics for which the BNP became known with the sort of vigorous street activism practiced by the EDL in his initial message. Later in the year, a dispute broke out between two factions; one led by Bryan/MacDonald and the other by Edward/Jaggers. The former are essentially the people who used to listen to Skrewdriver and wore bomber-jackets in the 1980s, including former BPP elements, while the latter are a more racialist version of Griffinite BNP (in a similar position to the British Democratic Party). Despite the politically embarrassing image of the former, they are by far the most active on the street and supported by the majority of NF members.

Public enlightenment

Throughout it's history, the National Front have had a variety of different publications supporting their cause. Typically these journals are tied to a personality or leader and thus the party has had a different official publication depending on the time period. The original and oldest extant publication is Candour which was tied to A. K. Chesterton and actually existed before the NF was formed. Following this, notable publications include Spearhead tied to John Tyndall and newspapers such as Britain First and NF News. During the factionalism of the 1980s, the Rising publication of Derek Holland was tied to the Official National Front, while The Flag was tied to Martin Wingfield and the Flag National Front. The Front was very slow to enter the internet age under technophobe chairman Tom Holmes and unlike the British National Party, they have never had a really high quality website. Today, however, there are two prominent weekly internet radio shows and podcasts which are largely pro-NF; Paul Hickman with The Voice of Albion on Renegade Broadcasting and David Jones with The Atlantic Axis on the American Nationalist Network.

Loyalism controversy

The National Front are controversial for their links to Ulster loyalism. Many of the Lowland Scots Presbytarians in Ulster who are the backbone of the loyalist movement are staunch friends of Zionism, a fact that some British nationalists are at pains to conceal. The so-called Ulster Banner even features a very suspicious six pointed star (this supposedly stands for the six counties, but given the history of Judeophile British Israelism and the prominence of the Orange Order in Ulster, is questionable). The excuse usually given for supporting loyalism is that the PIRA are allegedly Marxists. During the chairmanship of John Tyndall there was the excuse that he himself came from a Protestant Anglo-Irish family. This issue reared it's head during the 1980s, with one NF leader of Irish descent, Patrick Harrington, refusing to condemn the Provisionals. Today, under the leadership of tattooed, shaven headed Skrewdriver-types, the NF openly support the Orange Order, despite it's links to Freemasonry and Churchillian Judeophilia. An example of the end point of such ideology, can be taken from Britain First, the archetype of empty Ziono-Loyalist jingoism on the mainland.

"Violence" media meme

The controlled media systematically perpetuated a myth of the National Front as a criminal "violent" organisation. The underlying purpose of this meme was a form of divide and conquer psychological warfare along class lines. The Anglo-Saxon Protestant conservative middle-class male is a very queezy specimen; although many of them privately oppose what is being done to their country, they hold tight to bourgeois ideas of "respectibility". The image of proletarian men physically standing up for their country terrifies them as much as the foreign invader does, a fact the mass media knew well and exploited to stop these classes uniting for their nation under the banner of the National Front.

In reality, almost all "violence" from the NF was defensive in basis; this was in response to organised terroristic violence against them by Trotskyists (particularly the ANL), anarcho-communists and foreign invaders (for instance Black Africans murdered NF activist Anthony Donnelly). Such a response was entirely necessary and morally justified. It should be noted that the same BBC, The Guardian, The Independent and the rest of the mass media who attacked the NF as "violent", openly glorified violence when it is carried out by Black nationalists in Africa. There is even a statue to the terrorist mass murderer Nelson Mandela in Parliament Square, London.

Chairman

National Front, 1967—1986

Leader	From	Until	Notes
A. K. Chesterton	1967	1970	Founding member.
John O'Brien	1970	1972	Left to join the National Independence Party.
John Tyndall	1972	1974	Forced out of leadership by populists.
John Kingsley Read	1974	1976	Left to found National Party, after poor election results.
John Tyndall	1976	1980	Left to found New National Front, which became the BNP.
Andrew Brons	1980	1984	Stepped down, remained in party.
Martin Wingfield	1984	1986	Purged by radical Political Soldier faction.

Official National Front, 1986—1990

Leader	From	Until	Notes
Derek Holland, Nick Griffin and Patrick Harrington	1986	1989	Holland and Griffin left to found the International Third Position.
Patrick Harrington	1989	1990	Political Soldier faction ends, Harrington founds Third Way.

Flag National Front, 1986—1995

Leader	From	Until	Notes
Martin Wingfield	1986	1989	Previous chairman of National Front before schism.
Ian Anderson	1989	1995	Changed name to National Democrats, others disagreed.

National Front, 1995—present

Leader	From	Until	Notes
John McAuley	1995	1998	Somewhat reluctant leader, passed chairmanship on.
Tom Holmes	1998	2009	Resigned the leadership of party.
Ian Edward Costard	2009	2013	Resigned as chairman over policy, later entered into a conflict with Bryan/MacDonald majority faction.
Kevin Bryan	March 2013	November 2015	Previously deputy chairman, injured in a car accident
Dave MacDonald	November 2015	September 2018
Tony Martin	September 2018	present

Electoral performance

National general elections

Year	Candidates	MPs	Percentage vote	Total votes	Change	Average vote
1970	10	0	0.0	11,449	N/A	1145
1974, Feb	54	0	0.2	76,865	+0.1	1424
1974, Oct	90	0	0.4	113,843	+0.2	1265
1979	303	0	0.6	191,719	+0.2	633
1983	60	0	0.1	27,065	-0.5	451
1992	14	0	0.1	4,816	NA	344
1997	6	0	0.0	2,716	NA	453
2001	5	0	0.0	2,484	NA	497
2005	13	0	0.0	8,079	NA	622
2010	17	0	0.0	10,784	NA	634

EU parliament elections

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

External links

• Official Website at National-Front.org.uk
• National Front Official Page at Facebook
• National Front at YouTube
• Nationalist Sentinel at Blogspot.co.uk
• Britain Section at Stormfront
• Time to talk about the National Front by the Green Arrow
• Folktrove