Far right in the United Kingdom

Far right political groups have been in existence in the United Kingdom since the end of World War II, though earlier antecedents can be discerned in the fascist and anti-Jewish movements of the 1930s. It went on to acquire more explicitly racial connotations, being controlled in the 1960s and 1970s by self-proclaimed White Nationalist individuals and organisations that oppose non-white and Muslim immigration and multiculturalism, such as the British National Party (BNP) and the National Front (NF). Since the 1980s, the term has mainly been used to express the wish of such groups to remove the UK from the European Union, to preserve what they perceive to be British culture, and to campaign actively against the presence of non-indigenous ethnic minorities and what they perceive to be an excessive number of asylum seekers.

Far right in UK politics

Broadly, two strands can be identified in British nationalist politics since the split in the League of Empire Loyalists in the late 1950s. The White Nationalist National Front and the British National Party have been strongly opposed to non-white immigration. They have encouraged the repatriation of ethnic minorities: the NF favours compulsory repatriation, while the BNP favours a slightly more moderate approach, and in the past they have been associated, as the BNP was until the 1990s, with race riots and violent street politics. They have never achieved representation in the House of Commons, although they have had a number of local councillors in some inner-city areas of East London and one or two small mill towns in Yorkshire and Lancashire, such as Burnley and Keighley. East London had provided the bedrock of far-right support as long ago as the 1930s, whereas BNP success, such as it is, in the north of England is a newer phenomenon. The only other part of the country to provide any significant level of support for such views, now or in the past, is the West Midlands.

On the centre-right, a more moderate form of nationalism has existed in the League of Empire Loyalists and the Conservative Monday Club - both pressure groups within the Tory party - and more recently in United Kingdom Independence Party (UKIP) and Veritas, which both campaign against Britain's European Union membership and have also been strongly against uncontrolled immigration. There has been a long history of Euroscepticism in these groups, which became focused in parties such as UKIP after the Maastricht Treaty was passed. At one time, the Conservative Monday Club included a number of Members of Parliament (MPs), though this group has now been disowned by the Conservative Party. Other nationalist parties on the right have never had an MP, but UKIP has a number of MEPs and Councillors, and gained its first MP when Bob Spink, elected as a Tory, defected in April 2008.In Scotland, the Centre right is also occupied by the Scottish National Party, led by Alex Salmond. It campaigns for withdrawal of Scotland from the United Kingdom. It is also informally associated with the far right BNP in England, although this is frequently denied by several senior members.

History

Post-War and the decline of Empire

The British Nationalist movement rose out of the dying embers of the British fascist movement. Although leader Oswald Mosley actually went on to form a pro-European party, a number of members of the British Union of Fascists, which had been banned during World War II, became members of parties attempting to defend the British Empire.

The Empire had begun to break down as nationalist movements rose in the early 20th century, though this had largely been resisted in the UK. After 1945, pressure from the United Nations and the United States, together with the financial costs incurred by the war, led to a general acceptance that the empire was both immoral and economically unsustainable, and needed to be disbanded. This occurred over a thirty-year period, with the larger territories and Dominions being first to gain independence in the late 1940s - India in 1947 as an example.

The League of Empire Loyalists was the main group to develop in this era. Founded by A. K. Chesterton in 1954, it was a pressure group rather than a political party, and refused to contest elections. The majority of its members were part of the Conservative Party, and they were known for their politically embarrassing stunts at party conferences. J. R. R. Tolkien is claimed on the flimsiest evidence to have been a supporter [cite web|url=http://www.barnesreview.org/Tolkien/tolkien.html|title=The Barnes Review:Tolkien's Mythos] , despite his expressed dislike of "Britain", the British Empire and especially apartheid (see Tolkien's letters passim). It has been argued that the majority of this group were more 'Colonel Blimpish' traditionalists, rather than fascists. However, its more extreme elements wanted to make the group more political.

This led to a number of splinter groups forming, including the White Defence League and the National Labour Party. These both stood in local elections in 1958, and merged in 1960 to form the British National Party.

1960s-1980s - The National Front and anti-immigration

With the decline of the British Empire becoming inevitable, the explicitly British-Nationalist parties turned their attention to internal matters. The 1950s had seen a lot of immigration to the UK from its former colonies, particularly from India, Pakistan, the Caribbean and Uganda. Led by John Bean and Andrew Fountaine, the British National Party opposed the admittance of these people to the UK. A number of its rallies, such as a 1962 rally in Trafalgar Square, London, ended in race riots. After a few early successes, the party got into difficulties and was destroyed by internal arguments. In 1967 it joined forces with John Tyndall and the remnants of Chesterton's League of Empire Loyalists to form the National Front at another violent rally.

The NF quickly grew to be the biggest explicitly British-Nationalist party in the UK. It polled 44% in a local election in Deptford, London and finished third in three by-elections, though these results were completely untypical of the country as a whole. The party supported extreme unionism in Northern Ireland, and attracted Conservative members who had become disillusioned after Harold Macmillan had recognised the right to independence of the African colonies, and had criticized Apartheid [cite web|url=http://muse.jhu.edu/demo/rhetoric_and_public_affairs/v003/3.4myers.html|title=Harold Macmillan's "Winds of Change" Speech: A Case Study in the Rhetoric of Policy Change] in South Africa. During the 1970s the NF's violent rallies became a regular feature of British politics. Election results remained strong in a few working-class urban areas, with a number of local council seats won, but the party never came anywhere near winning representation in Parliament.

Other political groups also developed to support British Nationalism. The Conservative Monday Club was a ginger-group within the Conservative Party whose aim was 'to safeguard the liberty of the subject and integrity of the family in accordance with the customs, traditions, and character of the British people'. Again, this meant a general opposition to post-colonial states, and to immigration and immigrant communities in the UK, as well as support for the hard-line unionism in Northern Ireland. The Monday Club also gave strong support to Apartheid in South Africa and to Ian Smith's illegal declaration of independence in Rhodesia.

However, mainstream Conservatism under the leadership of Margaret Thatcher, who moved the party sharply to the right, and possibly in particular because she talked openly and sympathetically about the indigenous people's fears of being "swamped" by immigrant cultures, recovered the support of many of these people. No doubt as a result, support for the smaller far-right groups declined. They maintained anti-immigration policies, the Monday Group calling for an end to race relations laws in 1981. There was a move, however, towards a more inclusionist vision of the UK, and to opposition towards the European Union. The National Front, for example, began to support non-white radicals such as Louis Farrakhan. This led to the splintering of the various groups, with radical political soldiers such as a young Nick Griffin forming the Third Way group, and traditionalists creating the Flag Group. Membership of the Monday Club, meanwhile, fell to under 600 by 1987.

1990s and the anti-Europe movement

The New National Front had been formed by John Tyndall in 1980, and changed its name to the British National Party in 1982. They, alongside the Monday Club, campaigned against the increasing integration of the UK into the EU. They developed a policy of eschewing the traditional nationalist methods of extra-parliamentary movements, and concentrated instead on the ballot box.

The National Front continued to decline, whilst the more media-friendly BNP, led by Nick Griffin, grew in popularity. Around the turn of the 21st century, a number of councillors were won. However, policies of anti-immigration continued, [cite web|url=http://www.bnp.org.uk/policies/policies.htm|title=BNP Polices] and a damaging BBC documentary led to Griffin being charged with incitement to racial hatred (although he was found innocent). [cite web|url=http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/bradford/6135060.stm|title=BBC News: BNP leader cleared of race hate] The 2006 local elections brought the BNP the most successful results of any far-right party in British history. They gained 33 council seats, the second highest gain of any party at the elections; in Barking and Dagenham, they gained twelve councillors. Once again, however, their success was geographically concentrated into a small number of areas. In the 2008 local elections the party won a record 100 councillors and a seat on the Greater London Assembly, the biggest gains the party has had so far.

A less radical branch of nationalism was also born in the 1990s. The United Kingdom Independence Party, formed by Alan Sked in 1993, was born of failed attempts to block the Maastricht Treaty. As its name suggests, its main aim is to assert British national independence. Alongside the Referendum Party, which took a more single-issue approach to British withdrawal from the EU and many of whose members subsequently joined UKIP, it has been the most successful British nationalist party in elections. Despite some internal divisions, which led to MEP Robert Kilroy-Silk forming his own splinter party Veritas, it won 10 MEPs in the 2004 Euro-election. There have since been a number of divisions within the party, with some members leaving to join the English Democrats and the Popular Alliance. UKIP is now led by Nigel Farage MEP, regarded by some as one of the most effective speakers the Right has produced in decades.

Many UKIP members, like Farage, came from the Conservative Party, which had 'disowned' the Monday Club in 2001 and which has always been deeply split on the issue of Britain's membership of the EU. Nevertheless, the Conservative Party continues to be a British nationalist party in the sense that it stands for the Union (i.e. against Scottish and Welsh nationalism). Its full name until relatively recent times was the Conservative and Unionist Party. Of those Conservative members who do support Britain's membership of the EU, the great majority do so for what they perceive as pragmatic British-nationalist reasons, i.e. on balance they think it is in Britain's best interests to stay in the EU, rather than out of any enthusiasm for the European project itself. (The same is true of many members of the Labour Party, including the current Prime Minister, Gordon Brown, whose attitude towards the EU is noticeably cooler than that of his predecessor, and who in 2006 suggested the introduction of a British national holiday, [cite web|url=http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/4611682.stm|title=BBC News: Brown speech promotes Britishness] in the way that the French celebrate Bastille Day.) It should be noted however that some right-wingers, such as Simon Heffer, have shifted away from the promotion of Britishness towards English nationalism, partially because they believe (quite understandably) that their own views would be politically stronger in England should the Celtic parts of the United Kingdom go their own way.

Influential figures in British Far Right

*A. K. Chesterton
*John Bean
*Andrew Fountaine
*Enoch Powell
*Nick Griffin
*John Tyndall
*Martin Webster
*Oswald Mosley

References

Further reading

* [http://www.searchlightmagazine.com/features/century/cbf.php?include=page6 A history of fascism in the UK]
* [http://www.thephora.net/forum/forumdisplay.php?f=62 The Phora: British Nationalism Forum]