New British Fascism

Rise of the British National Party

Matthew Goodwin

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2011
• ISBN:
  9781136665905
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Politics
• Index: Politics & International Relations

The British National Party (BNP) is the most successful far right party in British political history. Based on unprecedented access to the party and its members, this book examines the rise of the BNP and explains what drives some citizens to support far right politics. It is essential reading for all those with an interest in British politics, extremism, voting, race relations and community cohesion. The book helps us understand:

• 
  
  

• how wider trends in society have created a favourable climate for the far right;

• 
  
  

• how the far right has presented a 'modernised' ideology and image;

• 
  
  

• how the movement is organized, and has evolved over time;
• who votes for the far right and why;
• why people join, become and remain actively involved in far right parties.

1

THE LEGACY OF HISTORY

If you say BNP to me, I think National Front.

Resident in Barking and Dagenham.¹

The roots of political parties are important as they can profoundly shape their longer-term development. A new party which builds on a tradition that most citizens consider legitimate is unlikely to find it difficult to attract some initial support. A party which builds on a tradition that is considered illegitimate, however, may struggle to present itself as a credible alternative. The enduring influence of historical legacies on political parties is particularly apparent in the evolution of the postwar extreme right. As others have shown, the most successful of these parties have generally been those which have built on diverse ideological currents and distanced themselves from the stigma of crude racism and interwar fascism. Conversely, the parties which tend to poll less well are those which have built on overtly fascist or neo-Nazi foundations, and are stigmatized in wider society as a result.²

These varying fortunes owe much to the way in which postwar European populations have increasingly subscribed to social norms of racial equality and support for democracy as a form of government. While in recent decades there has emerged a sizeable reservoir of public anxiety over immigration and its effects, and public distrust of the main parties, most citizens are unwilling to endorse the most strident forms of crude racism, anti-Semitism and anti-democratic appeals. As a consequence, parties which have sought to build on these traditions have struggled to attract a large and sustained following, and instead have been forced to rely on small rumps of racist voters. For these reasons, it is impossible to understand the rise of the BNP without first setting it in historical context and exploring its roots. The importance of these roots has been underscored by its current leader, Nick Griffin, who has talked of the constraints imposed on a party which ‘already has its own traditions, expectations, and complexities’.³

British Union of Fascists (BUF)

Before the outbreak of the Second World War, the extremist fringe in British politics was littered with minuscule and electorally irrelevant groups. Among others, the Britons Society, Fascist League, Stamford Fascists, Yorkshire Fascists, National Fascisti, Nordic League and British Fascisti all tried unsuccessfully to rally Britons under the banner of fascism.⁴ Rather than look toward German Nazism and its fanatical obsession with race, many of these groups took their inspiration from Italian fascism and accompanying ideas about how to reorganize authority and the state. Despite what their names implied, however, few grasped the core pillars of fascist ideology. Rather, the significance of groups like British Fascisti (BF) owed more to their role as a training ground for activists who, in later years, assumed leading positions on the extreme right.⁵

The only serious attempt at fascist mobilization was undertaken by the British Union of Fascists (BUF), which was founded by Oswald Mosley amid economic crisis in 1932. Unlike other figures on the extremist fringe, Mosley emerged out of the ‘mainstream’ establishment and had strong links to political and media elites. Even after switching allegiance to fascism, for a short period Mosley recruited support from the Daily Mail newspaper which, in 1934, ran with the headline ‘Hurrah for the Blackshirts’.

Among academics, there is a general consensus that the most interesting feature of the BUF was its ideology. Mosley was anything but a novice ideologue. In the 1920s he had worked on Keynesian-type economics and thereafter developed one of the most comprehensive articulations of fascism in interwar Europe.⁶ Through his tireless writing and speeches, the BUF leader made clear his desire to transform Britain into a single-party authoritarian regime based on corporatist economics and a strongly technocratic ethos.⁷ As others note, while this interest in corporatist economics did not necessarily make Mosley a fascist, his belief that people were necessarily unequal, his desire to destroy class differences and his ‘more general attempt to synthesize key aspects of the old with the new, especially in the quest to produce a new fascist man’ did.⁸

The BUF saw little need to question the aggressive foreign policies of Hitler and Mussolini, so long as Britain’s imperial interests were not threatened. Throughout the 1930s, it also came to embrace anti-Semitism, arguing for example that ‘alien Yiddish finance’ was undermining national prosperity.⁹ The fascist credentials of the BUF were also reflected in its paramilitary-style approach to campaigning, which put strong emphasis on organized rallies for its Blackshirted activists and frequent detours into political violence against opponents (the tactic was effectively neutralized following the Public Order Act in 1936).¹⁰ While the BUF and its followers dreamed of national power, their attempt to mobilize mass support through the ballot box was a total failure. Mosley had first sought to lure voters away from the main parties through the New Party (NP), which was founded in 1931 but met little success.¹¹ The performance of the BUF was similarly dismal and there appeared little public demand for Mosleyite fascism. Nor was this encouraged by its grassroots organization. As one historian notes, the BUF’s emphasis on paramilitarism and populist demagoguery meant it struggled to recruit a ‘better type’ of activist, and found it ‘extremely difficult to build efficient constituency and ward organisations in a locality’.¹² Its ambitions were also increasingly checked by anti-fascists, most notably at the notorious Olympia rally in 1934 which was marred by violence.

Internal weakness was one reason why the BUF abstained from the general election in 1935. Though Mosley sought to sustain morale through the slogan ‘Fascism next time’, the reality was that his movement was heading into electoral oblivion.¹³ In fact, the electoral performance of British fascism more generally was disastrous. The sum of elected representation amounted to only three councillors: two from the BF in Lincolnshire in 1926; and one from the BUF in Suffolk in 1938. The BUF proved unable to build a large base of support. Instead, it was restricted to a small number of working-class enclaves in London, the South East and, to a lesser extent, northern England. Its limited appeal was especially apparent in the mid-to-late 1930s when it fell heavily dependent on one area of the country for support, which was quickly earning itself a name as the heartland of fascist and extreme right politics.

Even before the First World War, residents of the East End of London had lent their support to organizations such as the anti-Semitic British Brothers League (BBL), which was mainly active in Bethnal Green, Limehouse, Stepney and Shoreditch. Between 1902 and 1905, and amid ‘prophecies of impending doom and racial conflict’, the BBL sought to galvanize opposition to Jews by claiming that Britain was being invaded by ‘alien swarms’, and that minority groups were receiving preferential treatment from local authorities.¹⁴ The movement did not endure, but as Britain passed through the 1930s, Eastenders continued to turn out in disproportionately large numbers for the BUF (although this support should not be exaggerated given that it did not elect even one councillor in the area).¹⁵ Nonetheless, and despite receiving financial support from Mussolini, the BUF failed to transform these small enclaves of sympathy into a national movement. This failure owed much to ‘supply-side’ factors, though mainly its chosen strategy; Mosley never seriously committed the BUF to an electoral strategy. Rather than engage with electoral politics, he pinned his hopes on being invited into power amid a period of national crisis. The result was that few resources were invested in electioneering.

While the BUF rallied few voters it did attract a sizeable membership which, according to some estimates, peaked at 40,000–50,000 followers in 1934. With the exception of an inner cadre of diehard Mosleyites, however, few members appeared active on a regular basis. One historian estimates that only seven of 200 members in Cardiff and 10 of 66 members in Leeds were active. By the end of the 1930s, there were no more than 100 members in the North West and only one fulltime worker in the entire north of England.¹⁶ Where was the movement strongest? Unfortunately, a lack of reliable data makes it extremely difficult to respond convincingly to this question. Academics suggest the largest and most active branches were in London, Manchester, Lancashire and Yorkshire and, to a lesser extent, some seaside towns along the South Coast.¹⁷ Yet as the outbreak of the Second World War approached, it was London’s East End which emerged as its ‘stronghold’. According to one estimate, in 1936–1938 more than half of the entire membership was concentrated in this area.¹⁸

It is also extremely difficult to shed light on the questions of who joined the movement and why. Some suggest early recruits arrived from the New Party, British Fascisti or Imperial Fascist League (IFL), and were drawn mainly from the armed services, middle classes, self-employed and fringes of the Conservative Party. In contrast, members of the more active Blackshirts and branches in the East End appear to have come from the working classes.¹⁹ A similar picture emerges from the most comprehensive study of BUF membership, which suggests there were two distinct factions; on one side were unemployed members of the working classes; on the other were more affluent members of the professional classes, such as ex-army officers. It seems likely that the former were recruited from the textile and shipping industries in Pennine Lancashire, Liverpool and the East End, while the latter were concentrated more heavily in southern England.²⁰

While the BUF attracted a significant grassroots base, its associations with continental fascism and propensity for political violence almost certainly alienated large sections of the electorate and mainstream establishment. In elections and the streets, Mosley never came close to producing his much anticipated seizure of power and, following the outbreak of war, was interned alongside his loyal lieutenants.

National Front (NF)

The political realities of postwar Europe rendered any attempt to return to the fascist blueprint futile. Nazi-style claims of racial supremacy, anti-Semitic theories and calls to overthrow the democratic system sparked little interest among weary, war-torn populations.²¹ Amid the rubble of war and knowledge of the atrocities which had been committed in the name of fascism and Nazism, political parties that were associated with this legacy found themselves stripped of legitimacy. In several cases, such as the openly neo-Nazi Socialist Reich Party (SRP) in Germany or National European Social Movement (NESB) in the Netherlands, parties were banned outright. Elsewhere, parties which advocated similar ideas but did not breach constitutional law were branded pariahs and put into political quarantine (a cordon sanitaire). Across the continent, parties which held their roots directly in the fascist tradition were sent back into the electoral desert along with their grandiose visions of racial supremacy and national rebirth.

British fascists who resurfaced after the war similarly encountered a hostile environment and few opportunities. Britons had emerged victorious from war, and anti-fascism was now a key ingredient of their national identity. Mosley, however, failed to grasp that he was damaged goods and gathered together 1,500 followers in the Union Movement (UM). After changing track by calling for European unity, in the 1950s he then targeted signs of anxiety among Londoners over the emerging issue of immigration. While the issue would later become the raison d’être of the postwar extreme right, the UM’s demands for a ‘white Brixton’ failed to resonate and the veteran agitator finally withdrew from British politics.²² The vacuum left by the departure of Mosley was soon filled by a new generation of activists, who advocated an alternative and less sophisticated strand of right-wing extremism. The new realities of postwar politics were seemingly lost on these ‘racial nationalists’ who clung to the core pillars of interwar Nazism. The doctrine of racial nationalism marked less a quest to forge a new ideological synthesis than a crude attempt to mobilize voters through anti-immigrant, anti-Semitic and anti-democratic appeals.

As their name implied, these activists thrust issues of race and nationalism to the forefront of campaigns, preaching crude racism and anti-democratic appeals to the few citizens who seemed willing to listen. Racial nationalism was emblematic of a particular type of extreme right ideology that combined three elements: biological racism; virulent anti-Semitism; and a revolutionary critique of the liberal democratic system.²³ The seeds of this tradition had been nurtured by figures such as Arnold Leese, an obscure yet highly influential figure, who was described by one historian as the ‘most fanatical, uncompromising and idiosyncratic of fascists’.²⁴ Inspired by the rise of continental fascism, Leese underwent a bizarre transition from a veterinarian who specialized in camel diseases to joining the British Fascisti and becoming one of the first fascist councillors in England.

Leese subsequently became a leading advocate of racial nationalism, though in particular anti-Semitism. In his autobiography, for example, he recollects becoming aware of a ‘Jewish plot for world domination’ and issued vitriolic tirades against the ‘Jew Menace’.²⁵ To some extent, Leese sought to cloak these ideas with a veneer of intellectual respectability by preaching pseudo-scientific theories about race and the alleged biological inequalities that differentiate groups. Like elsewhere in interwar Europe, Darwinian ideas about natural selection and the ‘survival of the fittest’ were manipulated and cited as evidence for the biological supremacy of the white race. Given these views, it is not surprising that some considered the former camel doctor to be the nearest equivalent to an ‘English Hitler’.²⁶

In the 1920s, these ideas found their expression in the Imperial Fascist League (IFL), an organization characterized by an ‘uncompromising crude racial fascis...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Halftitle
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• List of figures and tables
• Preface
• List of Abbreviations
• Introduction
• 1. The Legacy of History
• 2. In the Ghetto
• 3. From Street Gang to Political Party
• 4. Organizing for Elections
• 5. Voting for the BNP
• 6. Membership
• 7. Initial Motivations
• 8. Sustaining Commitment
• 9. Conclusions
• Appendix 1. Methodology
• Appendix 2
• Notes
• Index