Remembering Four Great British Nationalists – H&D Annual Meeting salutes Derek Beackon, Andrew Brons, Sir Oswald Mosley and Ian Stuart
On 9th September in the Lancashire village of Samlesbury, just to the east of Preston, over 80 nationalists – mainly from the North-West and Yorkshire – attended the annual H&D meeting. Over the past fifteen years or so H&D have hosted cross-party memorial meetings in and around Preston and that tradition continued.
This year the meeting was entitled “Honour the Past – Conquer the Future” and we honoured four great British nationalists, Derek Beackon, Andrew Brons, Sir Oswald Mosley and Ian Stuart Donaldson.
Despite the best efforts of the Lancashire Post, the Preston Blog, Labour Party, SWP, Red Flare (a nutty online Marxist Republican group) and local LGBTQ+ loons to stop it, H&D‘s annual meeting went ahead as planned, with no serious problems. All credit to Lancashire Police who respected our right to hold a legal political meeting in our free and democratic society and did not interfere with it.
While we were holding our successful 80 strong meeting in a first-class hotel in the beautiful Lancashire countryside, the loony lefties could only muster twenty-one (yes 21!) to their pathetic demonstration on Lune Street, many miles away in Preston city-centre! How ironic the loonies holding their demo on Lune Street!
Chaired by former NF and BNP organiser, and longstanding H&D subscriber Keith Axon, the meeting got underway with the traditional one minute’s silence for all the H&D subscribers who had passed away since our last meeting in September 2022, including Mr Ian Lofthouse, Dr. Roger Pearson, Mr K.D. Russell, Mr M. Sharp, Mr Ken Stead and Mr. P. Trelawney.
For only the second time we had two women speakers. This was one of many aspects of this year’s meeting that both on the panel and in the audience (over 20% were female) showed the increasing diversity of European nationalism.
Also, for only the second time we had two overseas speakers; H&D‘s European correspondent Isabel Peralta, who overcame another detention by UK Border Force at Manchester Airport; and Ken Schmidt H&D‘s American correspondent, who thankfully entered the UK without any problems.
Our Spanish and American guests were delighted to meet so many excellent new comrades from all over Great Britain, especially the large delegations from the British Movement and Patriotic Alternative.
After Keith Axon’s opening remarks, he introduced the first speaker of the afternoon; Benny Bullman, a British Movement activist, and the lead singer of the RAC band Whitelaw. Benny gave a fine tribute to the founder of Blood & Honour, Ian Stuart, who was born 66 years ago in the Lancashire town of Poulton-le-Fylde. It’s 30 years now since his death in 1993, but Benny emphasised that great comrades such as Ian Stuart still live with us in spirit, and we are all determined to be worthy of their legacy.
Our second speaker was Professor John Kersey, educationalist and musician, who leads several international university-level institutions dedicated to bespoke professional education for high achievers, gave a cogent analysis of the burgeoning threats to traditional British values and freedoms – and to the Christian values that are the bedrock of British and European civilization. The dictatorial grip of the political establishment is at last being resisted: the forces of resistance are no longer marginalised – our agenda of maintaining and restoring British traditions is now at the centre of political debate.
Our third speaker was Laura Towler, deputy leader of Patriotic Alternative. Laura talked both about Sir Oswald Mosley – this being the 75th anniversary since he formed his Union Movement, after the end of WWII in 1948 – and Patriotic Alternative, which for the past four years has been fighting to get across the message that White Lives Matter – across a broad front of activities from demonstrations to leafletting, mountain hikes to tea retailing! PA has grown rapidly in its four years of existence. Despite the setbacks of the Electoral Commission constantly rejecting their applications to register as a political party, the PA has combined some of the best veterans of older nationalist parties with a proven ability to attract the best of the younger online nationalist community.
Just before the lunch break, Keith Axon and meeting organiser Mark Cotterill auctioned off a number of books, a George Lincoln Rockwell magazine, framed photographs, Ulster flags and a Whitelaw LP that had been donated by H&D subscribers. The auction raised over £300.
The meeting was then adjourned for a twenty-minute lunch break. An excellent buffet was provided by the BM’s Women’s Division, who as always put on a fine spread.
Keith Axon then opened the second part of the meeting and introduced the afternoon’s fourth speaker Dr. Jim Lewthwaite, an archaeologist and former Bradford city councillor, now chairman of the British Democrats. His speech was based around Nigel Biggar’s new book Colonialism: A Moral Reckoning – which was reviewed in Issue 115 of H&D. Jim talked about the positive side of the British Empire, as well as slavery and how the British were the first of the major powers of the time to ban it. The British Democrats are now beginning to attract significant numbers of experienced activists as well as those new to electoral politics, however their results at this year’s council elections were disappointing.
Our fifth speaker of the afternoon was Isabel Peralta (speaking in Spanish with an English translation being read by Peter Rushton): she explained that the NS revolution did not end with the defeat at Berlin in 1945, and that faith in the true European cause was capable of moving mountains. She spoke of the great Spartan army, led by Leonidas, whose 300 Spartans stood fast and fought to the death against the mighty 200,000 strong Persian Army at the Battle of Thermopylae in 480 BC. The Spartans showed the true spirit of Europe that we again need now.
The spirit of unity in the real Europe which Isabel spoke about, will soon be reflected in stronger connections between European nationalists – keep checking our website and magazine for details!
Our sixth speaker was Stephen Frost: National Secretary of the British Movement, longstanding friend of Colin Jordan and author of the Colin Jordan biography ‘TWAS A GOOD FIGHT’! He acknowledged that our movement of resistance to multicultural decay is a ‘broad church’ of patriots, not all of whom by any means are national socialists (as represented by BM and Colin Jordan’s earlier organisations). Yet as he emphasised, BM has always been prepared to lend its support to sincere comrades from other groups and parties – at demonstrations, election campaigns and at meetings such as this one. He said the task of all nationalists is to spread propaganda for our cause by any and every means and format: whether old-school with hard copy leaflets and newspapers or by more modern means using the internet including social media. The propaganda war is bringing increasing numbers to realisation of the essential truth of our values.
Just before the second break of the afternoon H&D Editor Mark Cotterill held the raffle, ably assisted by one of the young ladies who were manning the H&D merchandise stall. There were around thirty raffle prizes this year – again all kindly donated by H&D subscribers.
Keith Axon then opened the third and final part of the meeting and introduced the afternoon’s seventh speaker Ken Schmidt. Ken has been an activist and writer in the American nationalist movement since the 1980s. He writes a regular column in H&D entitled “From the other side of the Pond”. He is now a member of the League of the South, although he is now living back in the north – in New Jersey.
He spoke firstly about Donald Trump and the US presidential election and then about how the USA as a country is breaking up due to multi-racialism/culturalism. And then about the various movements who support secession and the break-up of the USA as the only long-term solution if White people are to have any future in North America.
Our eighth speaker was Mark Collett, the former chairman of the young BNP, director of publicity and editor of the BNP magazine Identity. Mark is the leader of Patriotic Alternative which he formed in September 2019. Mark has been an active nationalist since the turn of the century and is the most debanked person in the UK! The PA is the fastest growing nationalist organisation in Great Britain and holds regular activities and events every single week. Mark’s speech was about his ten years inside the BNP, working his way up from the very bottom to the very top – what the BNP did right and what they did wrong, and how modern-day nationalists can learn from their mistakes.
Be sure to check this website in a few days time so that you can see videos of our event’s speeches, including Mark’s excellent insight into our movement’s recent history, which conveys important lessons for a new generation of activists.
Our ninth and final speaker of the afternoon was Peter Rushton: H&D‘s Assistant Editor and webmaster, historian, author of the new Real History Blog, and TV commentator. In his speech concluding the event, Peter mocked those ludicrous fake leftists who (with lavish funding from the usual suspects) had set out to stop our meeting. They had pulled out all the stops to defeat us, not because they feared “terrorism”, but because they feared the truth. “Anti-fascists” and their useful idiots (some of whom call themselves “nationalists”) spend most of their time spreading foul slanders (including against some of our guest speakers), but we carry on regardless with the task of rebuilding the true Britain and the true Europe.
This is the legacy of the four men whom we honoured at this event. If the authorities or the anti-fascists wished to talk about terrorists, Peter said, we were very happy to do so. We are happy to talk about the Zionist terrorists who bombed London, one of the worst of whom is still alive in Paris and untouched by the British counter-terrorist squad, who prefer to carry out political harassment of H&D writers such as Isabel, Peter and Mark. And we are happy to talk about the IRA terrorists to whom Conservative and Labour governments alike have betrayed our nation.
We should be in no doubt, Peter concluded, that reactionary Conservative capitalists are an even worse enemy than the so-called “Left” – the Tweedledum and Tweedledee whom Mosley ridiculed decades ago. Soon after the arrival of the Windrush in the 1940s, Labour MPs had warned about the consequences of mass non-White immigration, using language that would nowadays lead to them being raided by police. Peter thanked Mark Cotterill and his colleagues who have to remain nameless, for making this excellent event possible. He said he was proud to be fighting alongside his fellow speakers and audience members – drawn from many different groups and tendencies within the racial nationalist family – confident in the ultimate victory of our race and civilisation.
H&D editor Mark Cotterill ended the meeting by thanking everybody who helped organise the event and those in the audience who had made the effort to attend, some travelling considerable distances, including two from the USA, Germany and Spain.
Before the meeting and during the two intervals our audience browsed the many literature/merchandise stalls. Apart from the H&D table there were stalls from British Movement, Candour, Patriotic Alternative, The Supplement, Historical Review Press and Yorkshire Forum.
The evening before the meeting we held a social in a nice city centre pub, and after the meeting we returned back to the very same pub, as the landlord (an ex-squaddie himself) was so welcoming the first night, we thought we would give him another evening’s business! Around twenty nationalists attended both socials, some staying until just after 1am on the Saturday – a few sore heads on Sunday morning were reported!
And finally, special thanks again to the British Movement Women’s Division who provided an excellent buffet; and to the British Movement Leader Guard who carried out security duties in their usual highly efficient manner to ensure that our speakers and audience were entirely safe from the loonies of Lune Street, had they been able to afford the bus fare up to Samlesbury – which of course they could not!
Hopefully we can hold another similar event next year, maybe in a different part of the country, but only time will tell.
On the campaign trail in Bradford
H&D‘s assistant editor visited Bradford yesterday to campaign with our patron Dr Jim Lewthwaite, chairman of the British Democrats, who is contesting Wyke ward at the Bradford City Council elections on 4th May.
Jim was a councillor for Wyke ward from 2004-2007 and was among the first campaigners to draw attention to the city’s infamous ‘grooming’ scandal.
H&D is a non-party publication and we encourage our readers to support racial nationalist candidates regardless of faction.
Dr Jim Lewthwaite, a Cambridge-educated archaeologist, has been a regular speaker at H&D‘s John Tyndall Memorial Meetings, including last September’s event in Preston which also commemorated Colin Jordan and Richard Edmonds.
Leftists get a taste of their own ‘anti-terrorist’ medicine
Far left activists were outraged this week when a French Marxist publisher was arrested by London police under Schedule 7 of the Terrorism Act.
Ernest Moret was held for 24 hours after refusing to provide passwords for police to access his phone. He was released on bail yesterday evening.
Racial nationalists have known for many years that Schedule 7 gives UK police and border security officers extraordinary powers that would once have been seen as unconstitutional. Our own citizens as well as visitors can be detained on entering the country, and questioned for up to six hours.
Unlike any other arrest, those detained under Schedule 7 have no right to remain silent and are obliged to surrender their phones, computers and other devices, together with any relevant passwords. The authorities do not require any reason for detaining and questioning anyone under Schedule 7, and their questions can cover any subject.
Four of our H&D team have been detained under Schedule 7 in recent years. Editor Mark Cotterill has been stopped twice at Manchester Airport after returning from a non-political holiday to Mexico and a visit to H&D supporters in Australia. Assistant editor Peter Rushton was stopped at London Stansted Airport on returning from a visit to Germany. And last September our Spanish comrade and H&D writer Isabel Peralta was stopped at Manchester Airport, the night before speaking at our 2022 meeting in Preston.
Isabel’s case was especially outrageous because her computer and phone were retained for almost a week, without any justification, as part of a political ‘fishing expedition’ where UK authorities were liaising with political police and intelligence agencies in Germany and Spain.
Everyone at H&D understands that we have very limited rights under Schedule 7, but it seems that the far left is only now waking up to this reality.
In this week’s case, it seems likely that London police were cooperating with their Paris counterparts in an investigation of Ernest Moret’s involvement with protests against President Macron’s changes to French pensions.
Moret and a colleague were visiting fellow Marxists in London, associated with the well-known leftwing publishers Verso.
His fellow leftists at the Guardian and BBC, as well as the National Union of Journalists, were happy to publicise Moret’s case as some sort of outrage. Yet the same wokeists were perfectly happy when Mark, Peter and Isabel (who similarly have no connection to anything that could reasonably be called ‘terrorism’) were detained under the exact same law.
Why do Marxists assume that dictatorial laws will only be used against ‘racists’ and ‘fascists’, and that the far left is immune?
Ex-BNP official suspended by Tories
A former senior official in Nick Griffin’s BNP has been exposed in Rishi Sunak’s Conservative Party. The Tories have suspended Andy McBride from party membership, but he remains a Conservative candidate on the ballot paper for Bracknell Town Council in Berkshire.
During the late 2000s McBride became notorious as an especially factional and obstreperous BNP official. As regional organiser for South East England, he was a bitter enemy of H&D and sought to obstruct or even purge Griffin’s enemies from BNP ranks. His targets included well known supporters of former BNP leader John Tyndall, including the late Richard Edmonds and Warren Glass.
Now it is McBride himself who is being purged from his new party. He is accused not only of past roles in the BNP and Britain First, but of allegedly ‘racist’ posts on social media.
In 2011 McBride and his close ally, Ulster businessman Jim Dowson, resigned from the BNP and formed Britain First, together with former BNP official Paul Golding. Three years later, Dowson and McBride quit Britain First after a dispute with Golding. McBride made his way into the Conservative Party, while Dowson operates a series of Ulster-based fundraising enterprises alongside Nick Griffin.
McBride has written several garbled, ideologically incoherent replies to recent exposés by local newspapers. In his way, McBride is probably a sincere Christian whose politics are fundamentally reactionary and anti-Muslim rather than racial nationalist, but who ventures into colourful language and politically incorrect metaphors on social media.
The sad end to his political career shows that old-fashioned reactionaries have no future in today’s ‘woke’ Conservative Party. But equally, the fact that someone as ideologically vacuous as McBride ever became a BNP regional organiser is a damning indictment of the Griffin era.
‘Post-fascist’ party wins Italian election
Liberal and leftist commentators around the world have been horrified this week by the victory of Fratelli d’Italia (‘Brothers of Italy’) in Italy’s parliamentary elections and the imminent elevation of Fratelli‘s leader Giorgia Meloni to become her country’s first female prime minister.
Fratelli polled 26% of the vote (up from 4.4% in 2018 – one of the most rapid electoral advances in European history), winning 119 seats in the Chamber of Deputies and 65 in the Senate.
Meloni will now form a government at the head of a ‘right-wing’ coalition that includes Matteo Salvini’s anti-immigration party Lega (formerly the regionalist Lega Nord) who polled 8.8%; Silvio Berlusconi’s right-wing conservative party Forza Italia who polled 8.1%; and the ‘Moderates’, an alliance of small conservative factions, who polled only 0.9% nationwide but won seven seats in constituencies.
This is more than simply a pendulum swing between ‘right-wing’ and ‘left-wing’ coalitions. The true significance of the result is the changing balance of forces within the ‘right’ and the fact that the most ‘extreme’ of its four components is now by far the largest. At the 2018 election Salvini overtook Berlusconi to become leader of the ‘right’, but now Meloni has overtaken Salvini.
Fratelli was founded in 2012 as part of the restructuring of ‘right-wing’ politics in Italy, but its origins are in the ‘neo-fascist’ Movimento Sociale Italiano (MSI – Italian Social Movement), whose youth wing Meloni joined in 1992.
MSI in turn grew out of Mussolini’s fascist party and (as its name implied) out of the German-backed Italian Social Republic during the last days of the Second World War.
The extent to which Meloni’s politics still resembles racial nationalism, or is simply anti-immigration conservatism, is debatable. Undoubtedly she benefited from having distanced Fratelli from Russian dictator Vladimir Putin since his invasion of Ukraine. Salvini had been much closer to Putin and his credibility has been damaged by that association, to such an extent that his continued leadership of Lega is in question.
Some H&D readers will undoubtedly regard Meloni as a traitor to our cause for having trimmed in the direction of mainstream conservatism. However her own and her party’s ideological roots mean that Fratelli‘s victory is potentially more significant than other European populist successes of recent years.
This is not (yet) a victory for racial nationalism, but it is a giant step in the right direction, in the process of freeing European minds from their post-1945 paralysis.
Civic nationalism crashes to defeat in Yorkshire by-election
Parts of the Batley & Spen constituency in West Yorkshire were among the strongest racial nationalist areas in Britain during the first decade of the 21st century. The BNP’s David Exley won the mainly White working-class Heckmondwike ward at a by-election in August 2003 – one of a series of BNP victories either side of the Pennines, triggered by the Oldham riots of May 2001. Cllr Exley retained his seat in 2004 and a second Heckmondwike councillor was gained in 2005. Even as late as 2010 when the local BNP fought its last campaign, they managed 17.6%.
Admittedly this is just one of the six wards that make up Batley & Spen, but the party also polled very well elsewhere in the constituency in the 2000s, including the Tory wards Liversedge & Gomersal and Birstall & Birkenshaw. Any parliamentary by-election in Batley & Spen should have been (and should still be) good news for any serious pro-White nationalist party.
Yet when such a by-election first occurred here, it was in dramatic circumstances that made racial nationalist campaigning appear distasteful. A week before the Brexit referendum in June 2016, Batley & Spen’s Labour MP Jo Cox was murdered by a deranged Heckmondwike resident who was quickly labelled a ‘far right terrorist’ by the media. Despite living in Heckmondwike, Thomas Mair had no connection whatever with the BNP and was totally unknown to any other British nationalists, apart from the eccentric Alan Harvey (a former NF member long resident in South Africa) to whose newsletter South African Patriot Mair subscribed.
The other mainstream parties gave Labour a clear run in the ensuing by-election held in October 2016 and Labour’s Tracy Brabin won a majority of more than 16,000, with the civic nationalist English Democrats in second place on 4.8% and a much-diminished BNP third on 2.7%.
Reaction to Jo Cox’s murder only briefly disguised an anti-Labour trend among White voters. As in neighbouring Dewsbury, many White voters have been repelled by what they see as an Asian takeover of the local Labour party and by policies of the Asian Labour-led Kirklees council. To some extent these voters (using Brexit as a proxy issue for unmentionable racial concerns) have drifted to the Tories in recent elections. Even though UKIP and the Brexit Party failed to make much progress here, a former UKIP activist formed a populist movement called the Heavy Woollen Independents (a reference to the former staple industry of this area) who polled 12.2% at the 2019 general election, leaving Labour even more dependent on the presumed loyalty of Asian voters, concentrated in the Batley part of the constituency.
So when Tracy Brabin won the inaugural mayoral election for West Yorkshire in May this year, causing a second Batley & Spen parliamentary by-election in five years, one can understand eyes lighting up across various populist and broadly nationalist movements. All the more so because of a mini-scandal that pushed Batley into nationwide headlines in March this year, when a teacher at Batley Grammar School was briefly suspended for showing his pupils a cartoon of the Prophet Mohammed.
A crowded ballot paper of sixteen candidates for the by-election – held on July 1st – included several from the spectrum of pro-Brexit, populist, Islam-obsessed or broadly civic nationalism. Perhaps the best known to H&D readers were Anne-Marie Waters – the multiracialist but Islam-obsessed leader of the For Britain Movement, whose party includes several experienced racial nationalists even though its leader and her coterie are sincerely ‘anti-racist’; and Jayda Fransen, the anti-Islam campaigner and former deputy leader of Britain First who is nominal leader of Jim Dowson’s donation-hunting enterprise that calls itself the British Freedom Party (even though it isn’t and perhaps never will be a registered political party – so Ms Fransen had to stand as an Independent).
At the start of her campaign Ms Waters publicised an endorsement from ‘Tommy Robinson’, an ultra-Zionist career criminal who founded the English Defence League. Perhaps she hoped For Britain could become the political wing of the now defunct EDL – if so it was a foolish ambition.
The results declared early on the morning of July 2nd told their own story. Ms Waters finished twelfth of sixteen candidates with 97 votes (0.3%), while Ms Fransen was fifteenth with 50 votes (0.1%). This was little short of a disaster for civic, Islam-obsessed nationalism – especially since unlike Ms Fransen and her paymaster Dowson, Ms Waters and For Britain had attempted to fight a serious campaign, with seasoned political veterans including Eddy Butler and his wife Sue travelling from Essex, and former BNP activist Gary Bergin travelling from the Wirral.
Nor can they point to any other candidate from the same spectrum having cornered the White vote, as this entire spectrum polled poorly. The English Democrats (who at least had a relatively local candidate) fared best of a bad bunch with 207 votes (0.5%), followed by UKIP on 0.4%, the anti-lockdown Freedom Alliance on 0.3%, the SDP (once a centrist party but now pro-Brexit populists) on 0.1% a fraction ahead of Ms Fransen, and the ex-UKIP splinter Heritage Party (absolutely no connection to H&D!) polling even worse than Ms Fransen with a truly microscopic 0.05%.
Unlike the May local elections covered in Issue 102, one cannot explain these results in terms of a resurgent Tory Party taking the votes of pro-Brexit, racially conscious Whites. Contrary to expectations, the Tory vote actually fell here compared to 2019, and despite maverick charlatan George Galloway taking most of the Muslim vote, Labour managed to hold the seat, confounding pundits and bookmakers’ odds. The Tory campaign in the final few days was handicapped by the scandal that forced health minister Matt Hancock to resign last weekend, but almost every observer assumed this would merely reduce the size of an expected Tory victory.
I’m writing this article within hours of the result, so this is very much an instant analysis, but these are some of the lessons I think we can draw from what was surely the most significant by-election in years for our broadly-defined movement.
- Lunatic acts of political violence are a disaster for every wing of our movement, since even the most moderate civic nationalists are tarred by association in the minds of many potentially sympathetic voters. I’ve no doubt that many racially conscious folk cast their votes for Labour’s Kim Leadbeater because she is the sister of murdered MP Jo Cox.
- Outside Northern Ireland and some Scottish islands, very few Whites in the UK now define their politics in religious terms – and they regard those who do as a bit mad. No offence to those H&D readers who are religious believers and for whom this is the centre of their lives, but we should not fool ourselves about faith’s lack of electoral impact. Even racially conscious voters do not respond well to a campaign that is ‘over the top’ in shrill references to Islam. We can imply such things in sensibly worded racial nationalist leaflets, but hysterical ‘Islamophobia’ is not a vote-winner.
- George Galloway won most of the Muslim vote in Batley by campaigning on issues related to Palestine and Kashmir; but there is no equivalent bonus to be won among White voters by wrapping oneself in the Israeli flag. Aggressive Zionism is not a vote-winner among non-Jewish Britons, neither does it serve as an alibi for ‘racism’ as some former BNP veteran campaigners seem to believe.
- While Kim Leadbeater undoubtedly lost many Muslim votes because she is a lesbian (in addition to other factors depressing the Asian Labour vote), and Anne-Marie Waters perhaps lost a few socially conservative White voters for the same reason, homosexuality is no longer an issue for the vast majority of White voters, though the ‘trans’ nonsense is another matter.
- There continues to be no electoral benefit in campaigning against the government’s handling of the pandemic. Several parties focused on anti-lockdown policies all polled very poorly, especially the one for whom Covid-scepticism is its raison d’être, the Freedom Alliance whose candidate attracted only 100 votes (0.3%).
- Brexit’s electoral relevance is at last fading, and the Tory party’s hold over sections of the White working class is a lot weaker than many pundits have assumed. It’s Hartlepool (the ultra-Brexity constituency that fell to the Tories by a big majority two months ago) that’s the exceptional ‘outlier’; there are far more constituencies broadly similar to Batley & Spen, including neighbouring Dewsbury, presently held by the Tories.
- Kim Leadbeater won mainly due to White voters retaining (or returning to) traditional Labour loyalties. She lost most of the Muslim vote to George Galloway. In the probably unlikely event that Galloway can recruit high quality Muslim candidates to his new ‘Workers Party’, Labour might have difficulties in some other seats, but it’s more likely that they will just have problems turning out their Muslim voters after Keir Starmer’s shift of Labour policy away from hardline anti-Zionism. Most especially the modern left’s obsession with issues such as ‘trans rights’ will be a handicap in Muslim areas across Britain.
- The many and various consequences of multiracialism continue to provide rich electoral potential for racial nationalists, if and when we get our own act together. Many For Britain activists logically belong in the same party as British Democrats leader Dr Jim Lewthwaite and Patriotic Alternative leaders Mark Collett and Laura Towler, as well as many other movement activists and veterans of the old BNP who are (temporarily?) in political retirement.
All of these questions and more will be the background to a discussion of nationalist strategy post-Brexit and post-Covid. We look forward to hearing readers’ views in forthcoming editions of H&D.
Early results from ‘Super Thursday’ elections
This week saw the largest set of local and regional elections in the UK since the reorganisation of local government almost half a century ago.
Most counts will take place during Friday or Saturday, but a few were counted overnight.
As H&D has previously explained, the 2021 elections mark the end of the Nigel Farage era: his old party UKIP is now almost extinct, and the Brexit Party which he launched in 2019 has been rebranded (ineffectively) as Reform UK.
Racial nationalist parties are still in the process of reviving and reorganising themselves after a decade in Brexit’s shadow, but we expect a handful of strong results for several nationalist/populist candidates.
H&D editor Mark Cotterill is contesting Preston City Council and Lancashire County Council seats: when not involved in counts we shall be reporting here on these and other results.
Overnight the biggest breaking news was the defeat of Oldham Council leader Sean Fielding (Labour), who lost his seat to former police officer Mark Wilkinson, leader of the Failsworth Independent Party. Perhaps even more sensational for those of our readers who remember the glory days of Oldham BNP was that young Conservative candidate Beth Sharp defeated Labour in St James ward. In the old days this was the top BNP target and a no hope area for the Tories.
Ms Sharp’s victory is an early sign of what will surely be the main narrative of this week’s elections: the continuing success of Boris Johnson’s Conservative Party in areas that were once solidly Labour. This fragmentation could in the long-term be good news for nationalist parties, if we can get our act together.
An extraordinary civil war within Oldham’s Asian community saw Asian Labour candidates lose one Asian ghetto (St Mary’s) and almost lose another (Coldhurst) to Asian independents, while losing the racially split Medlock Vale ward to an Asian Conservative! (This is partly a consequence of local Labour bosses choosing to defy Muslim elders in a row over an Asian feminist councillor.)
In Oldham, UKIP and Reform UK did at least manage to avoid standing against each other, but nevertheless obtained appalling results with all four of their respective candidates finishing bottom of the poll: their votes ranged from 0.8% to 3.8%.
Elsewhere early results mostly confirmed that Reform UK (the rebranded Brexit Party) will fizzle out within months of its launch. Overnight there were just two Reform UK victories, both in Derby, with Tim Prosser elected in a freak result for Boulton ward, after the Conservative candidate withdrew to give him a free run against Labour; and John Evans retaining the Alvaston ward seat that he first won for UKIP in 2016 before his move first to the Brexit Party and now to Reform UK. The party’s other Derby candidates were heavily defeated.
Most other Reform UK results were very poor indeed: notably in the Hartlepool parliamentary by-election. This had been the Brexit Party’s main target seat only seventeen months ago at the 2019 General Election, where their candidate was Richard Tice, now leader of the rebranded party.
Yet Reform UK polled only 1.2% yesterday, down from Tice’s 25.8% in 2019. Almost all of those pro-Brexit voters swung behind the Conservatives, whose candidate won a historic victory. Most humiliating for Reform UK was that Claire Martin, candidate of the tiny UKIP splinter Heritage Party, polled 468 votes (1.6%) to push Reform UK into fifth place.
Those in our movement who believed that anti-lockdown or Covid-sceptic politics would prove an effective electoral strategy will be sobered by the mere 72 votes (0.2%) won by the Freedom Alliance candidate who finished bottom of a sixteen-strong field in Hartlepool.
In the old UKIP stronghold of Thurrock, two Reform UK candidates finished bottom of the poll, and their rival ex-colleagues from the old UKIP, now standing as Thurrock Independents, lost all the seats they were defending.
Sunderland is one of the few UKIP branches that has remained largely intact with few activists defecting to Farage’s Brexit/Reform, and UKIP managed a substantial local slate of 19 candidates. However they were all heavily defeated: their best result was 18.4% in Redhill ward, which they had won in 2019. The two other Sunderland wards that UKIP won in 2019 were Tory gains from Labour this year, in one case electing an Asian Tory councillor, with UKIP polling 8.1% and 8.8%.
We expect the For Britain Movement (an anti-Islamist party whose leader Anne-Marie Waters is ‘anti-racist’ but whose candidates include high-profile BNP veterans) to poll very well in some areas. However the party’s overnight results were poor, including heavy defeats in two eastern Newcastle wards – 3.5% in Walker and 1.7% in Walkergate.
Three members of the same family contesting Southend wards as For Britain candidates polled 4%, 2.3% and 2.1% respectively.
Public inquiry reveals police infiltration of 1970s National Front
Documents released this morning as part of a public inquiry into undercover policing reveal that an officer codenamed ‘Peter Collins’ infiltrated the National Front during 1975 and 1976.
Strangely this infiltration occurred not on the orders of his police superiors, but as an indirect consequence of his deployment to infiltrate a Trotskyist organisation, the Workers Revolutionary Party.
As with many far left groups, the WRP tried to latch on to any militant street activity, ranging from anti-war protests to the campaigns of vandalism launched by friends and family of armed robber George Davis.
An undercover police unit – the Special Demonstration Squad (SDS) – was created in 1968 in response to concerns about public order threats from a new generation of far left and ‘counterculture’ groups that had little or no connection to the old-style communist parties and fronts that MI5 and Special Branch had previously monitored.
The SDS recruited young police officers to work as long-term informants but about a decade ago these plans ended in scandal after it was revealed that some officers had fathered children with young women inside the groups they were infiltrating. Hence the present inquiry.
‘Peter Collins’ was infiltrated into the WRP in 1974, and a year later (by an extraordinary Chestertonian irony) the WRP themselves asked ‘Collins’ to infiltrate the NF on their behalf!
For a year or so ‘Collins’ therefore reported to his SDS handlers both on the WRP and on the NF.
H&D has today obtained copies of SDS and Special Branch documents released by the Inquiry. Unlike the rather confused Guardian reporter who tried to make sense of the story earlier today, we have specialist knowledge of the people and factions concerned, and will in due course publish an analysis of what ‘Collins’ was reporting on during 1975-76: what he thought was happening in the NF, and what was actually happening.
By 1976 the SDS allegedly gave up on infiltrating the ‘far right’, because the longer-established security agencies – Special Branch and MI5 – already had sufficient sources of information on the racial nationalist movement.
Much of this Special Branch and MI5 information would have come from Jewish anti-fascist organisations: the Searchlight intelligence organisation run by Gerry Gable and Harry Bidney that had grown out of the violent 62 Group, and the more ‘establishment’ intelligence arm of the Board of Deputies of British Jews.
‘Peter Collins’ reported to the SDS on aspects of the 1975-6 split within the NF that spawned the National Party, and on the objectives of a small group of NF radicals who sought to use the NP split as part of a longer-term strategy for their own takeover of the movement on the back of a temporary alliance with conservative elements.
Election Campaign Update
H&D Editor Mark Cotterill, aims to bring down Labour’s “Red Wall” in Ribbleton!
On Saturday (May 1st) we had two leafleting teams out. Team one completed Ribbleton (City Council) ward with our second election leaflet, and team two got a good chunk of Preston South East (Lancashire County Council) Division, with the second election leaflet done – see copy attached.
In Ribbleton Ward we finished off both the Brockholes Bow/Fishwick area and the Farrington Park/Bowness Estates. And in Preston South East Division we leafleted all of the massive Callon Estate (a White working class area – right next to a very enriched area).
Afterwards both teams met up, to leaflet the final couple of streets around the Blessed Sacrament /Farringdon Road area of Ribbleton ward.
Team One finished up having a few well deserved pints in the local ward pub, where H&D Assistant editor Peter Rushton got the first round in!
We will be going out leafleting again in Ribbleton ward/ Preston South East Division on Tuesday/Wednesday – depending on the weather, with our final “reminder” leaflet – see attached. So if you can spare a couple of hours and give us a hand, it would be very much appreciated. Just let us know which day/time you can help.
You can email me us at – heritageanddestiny@yahoo.com – or ring Mark on – 07833 677484. Please try and help if you can.
It’s looking very close now in Ribbleton Ward, with Labour just about in front, but with one more push we can bring that “Red Wall” tumbling down! However, in Preston South East, its going to be much harder as three-quarters of the Division is now very enriched now, with English being the second language on many streets. Still we are giving it a good go.
More or less all the pubs in Preston South East have now closed down, with the famous Acregate Hotel, on New Hall Lane, a former Boddingtons alehouse, closed down in 2010, set to become an Islamic Education centre. Just down the road towards the city centre, the former Belle Vue Hotel is now an East European super market.
The other parties (Conservative, Lib-Dem and Green) have not put out a single leaflet (as far as we can tell) in either Ribbleton or Preston South East – or even set foot – in the ward/division – incredible, but sadly true. They just take their voters for granted.
If you can’t help out with our campaign physically, for whatever reason (job, family, or you just live too far away) then you can still help the campaign by sending a donation towards the campaign costs (send to; Mark Cotterill, 40 Birkett Drive, Ribbleton, Preston, PR2 6HE – write on the back of the cheque/postal order – Election donation – if you wish to send a donation by Bank transfer thats fine too – call (07833 6774840 or email (heritageanddestiny@yahoo.com) us for the details.) Every pound helps.
The election count for Ribbleton Ward (Preston City council) will be held on Friday morning/lunchtime. And the count for Preston South East Division will be held on Saturday morning. As soon as we get the results, we will post them up on the H&D website.
Thanks in advance for your help and support, it’s very much appreciated.
Ulster’s uncertain future as Northern Ireland marks centenary
One hundred years ago today Ireland was partitioned with six of Ulster’s nine counties becoming the new province of Northern Ireland.
While the terms “Ulster” and “Northern Ireland” are often loosely treated as synonymous, the sad truth is of course that three Ulster counties – Cavan, Donegal and Monaghan – were consigned to rule from Dublin a century ago.
Ulstermen in these three counties who remained loyal to the United Kingdom – as well as their fellow loyalists in the three other Irish provinces of Connaught, Leinster and Munster – were abandoned by the London government for whom they had fought in the Flanders mud just a few years earlier.
Nor was this a straightforward religious divide. Many Catholics across Ireland remained loyal to the Crown, a topic that will be discussed in a forthcoming H&D book review. While today’s anniversary partly represents the successful resistance by generations of Ulstermen to malign plots by 20th and 21st century liberals and trans-Atlantic “new world order” advocates, it also reminds us of that original betrayal of loyalists abandoned (often to a bloody fate) south of the border.
Ironically the centenary of Northern Ireland coincides with a political crisis in Ulster’s largest political party – the Democratic Unionist Party. Whoever becomes DUP leader will have to negotiate treacherous political waters during the Brexit transition process.
Though Boris Johnson is technically leader of the “Conservative & Unionist Party”, the latter half of his party’s name seems to have been forgotten in Westminster and Whitehall.
It will be the job of loyal Ulstermen and their friends on the mainland to remind Johnson (and if necessary his successor) that the “sovereignty” supposedly regained by Brexit is meaningless if accompanied by the betrayal of almost two million of our compatriots, and the surrender of sovereignty over more than 5,000 square miles of Northern Ireland.
We look forward to the day when the British Isles are again reunited in some form of federal structure, when England, Scotland, Wales, and Ireland (north and south) stand together in the common struggle for racial and cultural survival.
Northern Ireland (at the 2011 census) was 98.2% White – by far the Whitest component of the British Isles. For all its founders’ pretence of ‘nationalism’, the Irish Republic is by contrast only 92% White and getting darker every day, especially in Dublin; Wales and Scotland are roughly 96% White; and England is of course the most multi-ethnic part of the UK – roughly 85% White.
