Nationalist Alliance

Last updated
Nationalist Alliance
Leader Catherine Parker-Brown
Founded2005 (2005)
Dissolved2008 (2008)
Headquarters England, United Kingdom
Ideology Far-right

The Nationalist Alliance was a far-right movement in British politics that aimed to serve as an umbrella group for the various white supremacist groups in Britain. The party was registered with the Electoral Commission in 2005, although its registration has since lapsed. [1]

Contents

History and activities

Founded in 2004 by majority-BNP members, [2] : 104  the NA sought to build a closer alliance with other groups on the far right that were not affiliated with and worked outside of the British National Party. One such alliance was a potential merge with the Freedom Party, though this did not come to pass, as Adrian Davies, chairman of the party, felt reluctant to join with some of the more extremist elements of the NA. [3]

Seeking to further ties with other far-right activists, the party held a meeting attended by members of the White Nationalist Party and the National Front at Rawdon Conservative Club in September 2005 as a memorial to John Tyndall, British fascist political activist and previous chairman of the National Front. [4] The event featured an address by a number of notable far-right nationalists, such as Richard Edmonds, member of the BNP, Eddy Morrison, NA party leader and ex-leader of the White Nationalist Party, and John Wood, former senior member of the WNP. [5] Towards the end of the meeting, the club had some of its windows smashed by unknown assailants; the club secretary later stated that the event had been booked under a false address with the booking secretary, and that he had been unaware of the nature of the group before the event took place. [4]

Split

The meeting held at Rawdon brought media attention upon both the NA and the far-right activists affiliated with the event, and leading to its eventual split. A photograph of some of the members inside the meeting appeared in an edition of Searchlight magazine, leading to accusations made amongst the activists as to where and from whom the image had come from.

Along with the failure of the Freedom Party initiative[ clarification needed ] and the rise of ideological clashes within the party, the NA split in September of 2005, with Morrison, Wood and Watmough breaking off to form the British Peoples Party. [6]

The split led to recriminations across the far-right movement, Morrison himself being verbally attacked by Martin Webster - former far-right leader and political activist - on Webster's online bulletin, Webster having accused Morrison of simply using the NA as a way to collect money from its members, a charge Morrison denied. [7]

Existing party activities and membership drift

Despite the split, the Nationalist Alliance continued to operate as a political entity, offering a political platform for nativist politics in favour of deportation, capital punishment and white nationalism. [8] The Alliance - largely under the direction of former Burnly BNP activist Sharon Pastow - continued their moves towards a wider alliance amongst the far-right in Britain by working closely with the National Front and the England First Party (EFP), whilst holding a large dual membership with the Wolf's Hook White Brotherhood, a splinter group of the BNP founded in 2004. [9] The white supremacist organisation Patriots of the White European Resistance ("P.O.W.E.R.") described the NA as a "brother of the 816" in an April 2007 newsletter, [10] referring to the greeting of "816" reported to have been used by members of the organisation. It was reported by Searchlight that at least at least four known members of the NA were known to have been members of the online forums run by P.O.W.E.R. at some point.

In November 2006, a prominent member of the Nationalist Alliance, Mick "Belsen" Sanderson, was stabbed to death in Nottingham following a fight with fellow NA member John Pakulski. [11] Pakulski was sentenced to six years of imprisonment for manslaughter for the murder, whilst fellow member Catherine Parker-Brown received a community order for conspiracy to pervert the course of justice after she was found to have attempted to clean the scene of the crime. [12] [13] Parker-Brown had been a former organiser for the BNP in the East Midlands and was formerly the nominal leader of the NA, though their membership had later become largely interchangeable with the increasingly more prominent EFP. [14]

The Wolf's Hook White Brotherhood - which had been considered a sister organisation to the NA - has since ceased to exist, with most of its membership transferring to the Racial Volunteer Force. [12] Beyond a former internet presence and its occasional publication Axiom (succeeding its two previous publications, Vanguard and Imperium, which have since been published by the BNP), the party is by and large defunct. [12]

Previous use of the name

The name had been used 'in house' for an initiative driven by Andrew Brons to achieve a reconciliation and joint electoral action between the Flag Group and the BNP in 1986, a move which ultimately came to nothing. [2] : 36–38  The modern incarnation of the Nationalist Alliance has no connection to this proposal.

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">British National Party</span> British fascist political party founded 1982

The British National Party (BNP) is a far-right, British fascist political party in the United Kingdom. It is headquartered in Wigton, Cumbria, and is led by Adam Walker. A minor party, it has no elected representatives at any level of UK government. The party was founded in 1982, and reached its greatest level of success in the 2000s, when it had over fifty seats in local government, one seat on the London Assembly, and two Members of the European Parliament.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">John Tyndall (far-right activist)</span> British neo-Nazi (1934–2005)

John Hutchyns Tyndall was a British fascist political activist. A leading member of various small neo-Nazi groups during the late 1950s and 1960s, he was chairman of the National Front (NF) from 1972 to 1974 and again from 1975 to 1980, and then chairman of the British National Party (BNP) from 1982 to 1999. He unsuccessfully stood for election to the House of Commons and European Parliament on several occasions.

The White Nationalist Party (WNP) was a British neo-nazi political party, founded in May 2002 as "the British political wing of Aryan Unity".

John Edward Bean was a British political activist and writer, who was a long-standing participant in far-right politics in the United Kingdom, and a number of its movements.

Mark Adrian Cotterill is a far right political figure who has been involved in a number of movements throughout his career. He is noted for activity to establish links between the far right in Britain and America, by founding the American Friends of the British National Party.

Derek William Beackon is a British far-right politician. He is currently a member of the British Democratic Party (BDP), and a former member of the British National Party (BNP) and National Front. In 1993, he became the BNP's first elected councillor, although he served for only eight months.

The Flag Group was a British far-right political party, formed from one of the two wings of the National Front in the 1980s. Formed in opposition to the Political Soldier wing of the Official National Front, it took its name from The Flag, a newspaper the followers of this faction formed after leaving and regrouping outside the main and diminishing rump of the rest of the party.

Ian Hugh Myddleton Anderson was a leading figure on the British far-right in the 1980s and 1990s.

Andrew Henry William Brons is a British politician and former MEP. Long active in far-right politics in Britain, he was elected as a Member of the European Parliament (MEP) for Yorkshire and the Humber for the fascist British National Party (BNP) at the 2009 European Parliament election and held the seat until May 2014. He was the chairman of the National Front in the early 1980s. He resigned the BNP whip in October 2012 and became patron of the far-right British Democratic Party. He did not seek re-election in 2014.

Martin Guy Alan Webster is a British neo-Nazi, a former leading figure on the far-right in the United Kingdom. An early member of the National Labour Party (NLP), he was John Tyndall's closest ally, and followed him in joining the original British National Party (BNP), the National Socialist Movement (NSM) and the Greater Britain Movement. Webster also spent time in prison for helping to organise a paramilitary organisation, Spearhead, and was convicted under the Public Order Act 1936. Rumours of his homosexuality led to him becoming vilified in far-right circles, and he quietly disappeared from the political scene.

The Official National Front (ONF) was one of two far-right groups to emerge in the United Kingdom in 1986 following a split within the National Front. Following ideological paths that were mostly new to the British far-right, the ONF stood opposed to the more traditionalist Flag Group.

John Graeme Wood was an English politician who was prominent on the far-right political scene from the late 1950s until his death.

Eddy Morrison was a British neo-Nazi political activist, who was involved in a number of movements throughout his career.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">British People's Party (2005)</span> 2005–2013 British neo-Nazi political party

The British People's Party (BPP) was a neo-Nazi political party in the United Kingdom, launched in 2005 by Kevin Watmough, Eddy Morrison, John G. Wood and Sid Williamson, former members of Combat 18, British National Party (BNP), National Front (NF) and the White Nationalist Party, as a splinter group from the Nationalist Alliance. Its founding member Eddy Morrison left the BPP and joined the NF in 2009. The party dissolved in 2013.

Far-right politics in the United Kingdom is a recurring phenomenon in the United Kingdom since the early 20th century, with the formation of Nazi, fascist and antisemitic movements. One of the earliest examples of Fascism in the UK can be found as early as 1923 with the formation of British Fascisti by Rotha Lintorn-Orman. It went on to acquire more explicitly racial connotations, being dominated in the 1960s and 1970s by self-proclaimed white nationalist organisations that opposed non-white and Asian immigration. The idea stems from belief of white supremacy, the belief that white people are superior to all other races and should therefore dominate society. Examples of such groups in the UK are the National Front (NF), the British Movement (BM) and British National Party (BNP), or the British Union of Fascists (BUF). Since the 1980s, the term has mainly been used to describe those groups, such as the English Defence League, who express the wish to preserve what they perceive to be British culture, and those who campaign against the presence of non-indigenous ethnic minorities.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Redwatch</span> British website

Redwatch was a British website associated with members of the far-right British People's Party. It published photographs of, and personal information about, alleged far left and anti-fascist activists. It typically targeted activists in political parties, advocacy groups, trade unions and the media. The website's slogan was "Remember places, traitors' faces, they'll all pay for their crimes", a quote from neo-Nazi musician Ian Stuart Donaldson.

Arthur Kemp is a Rhodesian-born writer and the owner of Ostara Publications, a distributor of racist tracts, who was from 2009 to 2011 the foreign affairs spokesperson for the British National Party. He was born in Southern Rhodesia (Zimbabwe) and worked as a right-wing journalist in South Africa before moving to the United Kingdom in 1996.

The British Democratic Party (BDP), commonly known as the British Democrats, is a British far-right political party. It was registered with the Electoral Commission in 2011, and officially launched in 2013 at a Leicestershire village hall by a ten-member steering committee which included former members of several political parties including the British National Party (BNP), Democratic Nationalists, Freedom Party and UK Independence Party (UKIP).

The British National Party (BNP) is a far-right political party in the United Kingdom formed as a splinter group from the National Front by John Tyndall in 1982 and was led by Nick Griffin from September 1999 to July 2014. Its current chairman is Adam Walker. The BNP platform is centred on the advocacy of "firm but voluntary incentives for immigrants and their descendants to return home", as well as the repeal of anti-discrimination legislation. It restricted membership to "indigenous British" people until a 2010 legal challenge to its constitution.

References

  1. ↑ "Renamed or Deregistered Parties" (PDF). electoralcomission.org.uk. The Electoral Commission. Retrieved 2 June 2020.
  2. 1 2 Copsey, N. (2004). Contemporary British Fascism: The British National Party and the Quest for Legitimacy. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.
  3. ↑ Searchlight, No. 363, September 2005, p. 25
  4. 1 2 Lazenby, Peter. "Far-right event sparks violence". yorkshireeveningpost.co.uk. The Yorkshire Evening Post. Archived from the original on 5 May 2013. Retrieved 2 June 2020.
  5. ↑ Searchlight, No. 364, October 2005, p. 9
  6. ↑ Searchlight, No. 368, February 2006, p. 13
  7. ↑ Searchlight, No. 366, December 2005, p. 26
  8. ↑ "THE NATIONALIST ALLIANCE". allnationalist.com. The Nationalist Alliance. Archived from the original on 9 April 2010. Retrieved 2 June 2020.
  9. ↑ Searchlight, No. 379, January 2007, p. 17
  10. ↑ Gable, Gerry. "Lone wolves: myth or reality?" (PDF). Searchlight. p. 154. Retrieved 3 June 2020.
  11. ↑ Searchlight, No. 379, January 2007, p. 23
  12. 1 2 3 Searchlight, No. 391, January 2008, p. 23
  13. ↑ Mullins, Helen (10 September 2007). "Worksop man with racist links gets six years for manslaughter". Worksop Guardian. The Worksop Guardian.
  14. ↑ Searchlight, No. 388, October 2007, p. 16
This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.