The National Party of Europe (NPE) was an initiative undertaken by a number of far-right political parties in Europe during the 1960s to help increase cross-border co-operation and work towards European unity. Under the direction of Sir Oswald Mosley, a pre-war British fascist leader who returned to politics after the Second World War, the group aimed to bring together and merge a number of far-right groups from across the continent, all of which shared at least some commitment to a wider pan-European nationalism. The group failed to achieve its aims as most of its member groups preferred to maintain their independence.
The idea of an NPE began when Oswald Mosley launched his Europe a Nation campaign after World War II at a time when contemporaries such as Jean-François Thiriart were also becoming interested in Europeanism. [1] Attempts soon followed to co-ordinate this growth in pan-European nationalism, although the European Social Movement and the New European Order were loose networks and a more concrete alliance was called for. [2] The idea came to fruition at the Conference of Venice in 1962 when the leaders of the Union Movement, the Deutsche Reichspartei, the Italian Social Movement, Jeune Europe and the Mouvement d'Action Civique came together to form this group. [3] The European Declaration at Venice was released on 1 March 1962 and contained the following ten aims:
The conference also decided that each member party should seek to change its name to NPE or the local equivalent, that the motto of the new group should be 'Progress - Solidarity - Unity' and that the Flash and Circle should serve as the emblem of the movement. [5]
Despite the high ambitions, the idea did not come to much. Both the Italian Social Movement and the National Democratic Party of Germany, successor to the Deutsche Reichspartei, refused to change their name and only set up a permanent liaison office. [6] Meanwhile, Thiriart moved increasingly away from the NPE and towards national communism. [7] As well as this, many of the leading neo-fascist groups in Europe took no part in the NPE. [6] Mosley meanwhile had little day-to-day contact with the Union Movement from his base in France and he retired from politics altogether after his poor showing in Shoreditch and Finsbury at the 1966 general election, effectively drawing the curtain on the NPE. [8]
A group called European Action continued to agitate for the aims of the NPE until the 2010s through its newspaper of the same name, edited by Robert Edwards, although it was an almost exclusively British movement. [9]
Country | Party | Leader | National MPs [10] |
---|---|---|---|
Belgium | Civic Action Movement Mouvement d'Action Civique | Jean-François Thiriart | 0 / 212 |
West Germany | German Reich Party Deutsche Reichspartei | Alexander Andrae | 0 / 521 |
Italy | Italian Social Movement Movimento Sociale Italiano | Augusto De Marsanich | 32 / 574 |
United Kingdom | Union Movement | Sir Oswald Mosley | 0 / 650 |
Neo-fascism is a post-World War II far-right ideology that includes significant elements of fascism. Neo-fascism usually includes ultranationalism, ultraconservatism, racial supremacy, right-wing populism, authoritarianism, nativism, xenophobia, and anti-immigration sentiment, sometimes with economic liberal issues, as well as opposition to social democracy, parliamentarianism, Marxism, capitalism, communism, and socialism. As with classical fascism, it occasionally proposes a Third Position as an alternative to market capitalism.
Francis Parker Yockey was an American fascist and pan-European nationalist idealogue. A lawyer, he is known for his neo-Spenglerian book Imperium: The Philosophy of History and Politics, published in 1948 under the pen name Ulick Varange, which called for a neo-Nazi European empire.
Political Soldier is a political concept associated with the Third Position. It played a leading role in Britain's National Front from the late 1970s onwards under young radicals Nick Griffin, Patrick Harrington and Derek Holland of the Official National Front. The term was used to indicate an almost fanatical devotion to the cause of nationalism, which its supporters felt was needed to bring about a revolutionary change in society.
Jean-François Thiriart, often known as Jean Thiriart, was a Belgian far-right political theorist.
The Third Position is a set of neo-fascist political ideologies that were first described in Western Europe following the Second World War. Developed in the context of the Cold War, it developed its name through the claim that it represented a third position between the capitalism of the Western Bloc and the communism of the Eastern Bloc.
The Deutsche Reichspartei (DRP), also known as the German Empire Party or German Imperial Party, was a nationalist, far-right, and later neo-Nazi political party in West Germany. It was founded in 1950 from the German Right Party, which had been set up in Lower Saxony in 1946 and had five members in the first Bundestag, and from which it took the name. Its biggest success and only major breakthrough came in the 1959 Rhineland-Palatinate regional election, when it sent a deputy to the assembly.
Jeune Europe was a neo-fascist euro-nationalist movement formed by Jean Thiriart in Belgium. Emile Lecerf, a later editor of the Nouvel Europe Magazine, was one of Thiriart's associates.
The League of St George is a neo-fascist organisation based in the United Kingdom. It has defined itself as a "non-party, non-sectarian political club" and, whilst forging alliances with different groups, has eschewed close links with other extremist political parties.
Europe a Nation was a policy developed by the British fascist politician Oswald Mosley as the cornerstone of his Union Movement. It called for the integration of Europe into a single political entity. Although the idea failed to gain widespread support for the Union Movement, it proved highly influential on European far-right thought.
European nationalism is a form of pan-nationalism based on a pan-European identity. It is considered minor since the National Party of Europe disintegrated in the 1970s.
Adolf von Thadden was a German far-right politician. Born into a leading Pomeranian landowning family, he was the half-brother of Elisabeth von Thadden, a prominent critic of the Nazis who was executed by the Nazi government in September 1944.
The New Swedish Movement was a far-right political movement in Sweden that emphasized strong Swedish nationalism, corporatism and anti-communism as well as a cult of personality around Per Engdahl.
The Parti Communautaire National-Européen (PCN) is a Belgium-based political organisation led by Luc Michel, a former member of the neo-Nazi FANE party. A largely National Bolshevik movement, it also has activists in France.
The European Social Movement was a neo-fascist European political alliance set up in 1951 to promote pan-European nationalism.
The National Salvation Front was a broad coalition of communist, socialist, and right-wing nationalist movements against the government of President Boris Yeltsin in Russia. Established in 1992, the FNS was the first group to be banned in post-Soviet Russia before playing a leading role in the 1993 Russian constitutional crisis.
Karl-Heinz Priester was a German far-right political activist. While he played only a minor role in Nazi Germany, Priester became a leading figure on the extreme right in Europe after the Second World War.
Imperium: The Philosophy of History and Politics is a 1948 book by Francis Parker Yockey, using the pen name Ulick Varange, that argues for a pan-European fascist empire. Imperium presents an antisemitic theory of history, asserts that the Holocaust was a hoax, and is dedicated to "the hero of the Second World War", meant to describe Adolf Hitler.
British fascism is the form of fascism which is promoted by some political parties and movements in the United Kingdom. It is based on British ultranationalism and imperialism and had aspects of Italian fascism and Nazism both before and after World War II.
The Union Movement (UM) was a far-right political party founded in the United Kingdom by Oswald Mosley. Before the Second World War, Mosley's British Union of Fascists (BUF) had wanted to concentrate trade within the British Empire, but the Union Movement attempted to stress the importance of developing a European nationalism, rather than a narrower country-based nationalism. That has caused the UM to be characterised as an attempt by Mosley to start again in his political life by embracing more democratic and international policies than those with which he had previously been associated. The UM has been described as post-fascist by former members such as Robert Edwards, the founder of the pro-Mosley European Action, a British pressure group and monthly newspaper.