The Rudolf Hess memorial, the Asian Marxist lawyer, and subversion in Spain – a strange tale of the new ‘European’ left

The young Aamer Anwar as a student Marxist and ‘Anti-Nazi League’ organiser, smashing the Rudolf Hess memorial near Glasgow.

Edinburgh’s extradition court has been the scene of a drama played out across several episodes, demonstrating certain common factors among Europe’s enemies, and the deep historical roots of a challenge facing all European patriots.

Marxist lawyer Aamer Anwar – the man who smashed the Hess memorial stone – is heavily promoted today in Rupert Murdoch’s Sunday Times, ahead of a multi-part BBC series this month that will portray him as a hero.

H&D‘s assistant editor – writing at the Real History blog – today explains the strange story of the Rudolf Hess memorial stone, an Asian Marxist lawyer, and subversion in Spain – an extraordinary tale of the new ‘European’ left.

Aamer Anwar (Marxist activist and wealthy SNP lawyer) outside Edinburgh’s extradition court with his client Clara Ponsatí, a fugitive from sedition charges in Spain

Visit this site after 12th October for an update direct from the extradition court in Edinburgh, where the fate of Vincent Reynouard will be decided. Click here to subscribe to H&D so that you can learn the full story in our November edition, and obtain the two-part interview with Vincent Reynouard in issues 115 and 116 of H&D.

IRA godfather Gerry Adams with the convicted kidnapper and ETA terrorist Arnaldo Otegi, leader of the Basque extremist party EH Bildu, which is negotiating with Ponsatí’s Catalan separatists to support a far left coalition government in Spain.

The new Minister for Refugees and the anti-fascist thug

Richard (now Lord) Harrington – Britain’s new Minister for Refugees

This afternoon Richard Harrington – former Conservative MP for Watford – was elevated to the House of Lords and appointed Minister for Refugees in Boris Johnson’s government.

Regular H&D readers might remember Mr Harrington’s name. In 2011 he gave a eulogy at the funeral of Cyril Paskin, former ‘field commander’ of the 62 Group.

This was a notoriously violent gang of ‘anti-fascist’ Jews who specialised in physical attacks on racial nationalists, including members of 1960s movements led by Sir Oswald Mosley, Colin Jordan, John Tyndall, John Bean and A.K. Chesterton.

Cyril Paskin, commander of the 62 Group, for whom Harrington gave a funeral eulogy in 2011.

Numerous 62 Group members were convicted, either for assault, vandalism, burglary or other offences.

Among the convicts was Gerry Gable, now editor of Searchlight, who was the 62 Group’s intelligence officer and was a fellow speaker at Paskin’s funeral alongside the now ennobled minister Lord Harrington.

Another close colleague of Paskin’s was Gerald Ronson, who handled 62 Group finances. Ronson was convicted as a young man for assault, and later served a jail sentence for fraud in the notorious Guinness scandal.

Cyril Paskin (above centre) with the Prince of Wales

Last October the BBC broadcast a fictionalised version of the 62 Group’s history – Ridley Road, a four part drama which is reviewed by Peter Rushton in the new issue of Heritage and Destiny. This review will expose the true story of the 62 Group and the true background to ‘anti-fascist’ violence in 1960s Britain.

What particular attributes did Boris Johnson have in mind when appointing Lord Harrington to this post? (He was previously Minister for Syrian Refugees in 2015-2016, before holding two other ministerial posts related to pensions and business from 2016-2019.)

Perhaps the Prime Minister has a sick sense of irony. Harrington was for many years the Chairman of Conservative Friends of Israel – devoted to promoting the interests of a state that has been responsible for some of the world’s worst refugee problems.

Gerald Ronson – formerly in charge of finances for the 62 Group – with ex-PM David Cameron

John Bean 1927-2021

We were very sad to hear that our oldest subscriber – and the oldest surviving former leader of a British nationalist party – John Bean died this afternoon (9th November) aged 94. A tribute will appear in the January-February edition of H&D, since the November-December issue has already gone to press.

John was born on June 27th, 1927 in Carshalton, Surrey. The family moved to Blackfen, near Sidcup in Kent, where at the age of 13 he suffered the trauma of being bombed out of the family home in February 1941.

Aged 18, John began his National Service in 1945. He was largely apolitical, although he had briefly flirted with communism whilst at school, calling for support for the Soviet Union. (It’s probably for this reason that MI5 opened a personal file on John much earlier than those on other postwar nationalists: though nothing from this file has yet been released to the National Archives, we do know that he was assigned the file number PF 135975. In those days the lower the PF number, the older the file, so John Bean’s file must have begun earlier than those on his older comrades Andrew Fountaine, PF 154245, or Colin Jordan, PF 204076.)

Initially he was a trainee navigator in the RAF Volunteer Reserve. Later as a sailor in the Royal Navy. John became a radar mechanic and was placed on HMS Bulawayo, a fleet supply ship which made several visits to Trinidad until the end of his naval service in June 1948.

He briefly lived in India during 1950, working as a chemist in a paint factory, although he failed to settle and returned to Britain six months later.

Upon his return, John began to attend meetings of the Union Movement, being attracted by the ‘Europe a Nation’ policy and by the time Oswald Mosley had spent in prison for his beliefs. John initially served as a member of the Special Propaganda Service, the main duty of which was to sell copies of the party’s newspaper Union.

Soon however he became a leading figure active on behalf of the UM in the East End of London, before being appointed to head a branch in Putney in 1952. Despite these advancements, John grew disillusioned of the UM’s chances of making any real headway and he left them altogether in February 1953. A brief stopover in the local Conservative Party in Barnes followed but lasted only two months.

After a spell on the side-lines he then linked up with Andrew Fountaine, who had been attempting to form his own party, the National Front, and began to produce a journal, National Unity.

His work attracted the attention of A.K. Chesterton and, with the National Front idea failing to get off the ground, he decided to join the League of Empire Loyalists, serving as its Northern Organiser and then in the HQ in London. Continuing to produce his paper, now called The Loyalist, John soon became frustrated at both the lack of political activity and the links to the Conservative Party that were the hallmarks of the LEL.

He left in 1957 to set up the National Labour Party with Fountaine. Fountaine, a Norfolk landowner from a rural landowning family, was officially President of the new group, but was largely a figurehead: control actually lay with John. The new party’s inaugural meeting took place in a private at the Carpenters Arms pub in Brick Lane, East London, on 24th May 1958.

The NLP gained a few minor results in elections but was always destined to be a small fringe movement, and as a result John decided to merge his party with another LEL splinter group, the White Defence League in 1960 to form the British National Party.

John Bean was made leader of the party upon its foundation. Early in the group’s life, both John and former White Defence League leader Colin Jordan were approached by Oswald Mosley, who offered them roles in his Union Movement if they agreed to its subsuming the BNP, but both men rejected the offer.

John Bean’s 1960s BNP produced a monthly journal Combat

Initially gaining some support in London, the party soon ran into trouble when it became clear that Colin Jordan was emerging as its spokesman. A journalist commented in 1962 that Jordan was becoming the British Adolf Hitler. John jokingly responded to the Daily Mail reporter that that made him “the British Joseph Goebbels”. Despite this, John soon clashed with Jordan over his extremism and before long Jordan had left to form the National Socialist Movement, taking emerging figures John Tyndall and Denis Pirie with him. Matters had come to a head at the party’s national council meeting in 1962 when John proposed a motion to condemn Jordan’s open support for National Socialism. It was passed 7 to 5, but the party immediately split as a result, albeit with around 80% of the membership remaining within the BNP. John had blamed the associations with National Socialism that Jordan and Tyndall brought for the party’s marginal position in British politics.

At the 1964 general election John Bean stood as BNP candidate in Southall and obtained 3,410 votes (9.3%), the highest post-war vote for a minority party at that time. Another BNP candidate picked up nearly 2,000 votes in Deptford. In 1966 he again stood in Southall, but his vote fell to 2,600. With BNP membership only marginally increasing, John felt the need to try to create a nationalist front with like groups and arranged, with the help of Ted Budden, a private meeting with his old mentor A.K. Chesterton and a spokesman of the Racial Preservation Society. The result of the meeting was the founding of the National Front in 1967.

John became something of a peripheral figure in the NF, as the BNP element was somewhat side-lined. He held the post of Deputy Chairman of the Executive Directorate, a body which was largely subordinate to the Policy Directorate and stood as second candidate for the Ealing constituency in the 1967 Greater London Council elections until resigning in 1968. Still an NF member, he was recalled to positions of minor influence from time to time until 1972 when he largely ceased active involvement. Retreating into political retirement, his membership lapsed in 1977.

He emerged only briefly to lend some support to his old friend Andrew Fountaine’s NF Constitutional Movement and to take part in the Countryside Alliance March of 1st March 1998 – which was also attended by supporters of Nick Griffin, by then inside the BNP.

John eventually ended his retirement after the political fall of John Tyndall and joined the British National Party under the leadership of Nick Griffin. He became an active official of the BNP (mostly in administration) and was a candidate for the party in the 2004 European elections, where he was seventh on a list of seven candidates for the Scotland constituency.

He formerly ran his own website, but then wrote a regular column for the main BNP website, and served as editor of BNP magazine Identity until March 2010.

Due to dissatisfaction with his leadership, John demanded that Nick Griffin resign as National Chairman and focus more on representing the North West region as an MEP.

In May 2011, John endorsed Andrew Brons (the BNP MEP for Yorkshire and the Humber) in his challenge for the BNP leadership. He made significant contributions to the Brons team web site, including articles on ‘Genetics and Inheritance’ and ‘Nationalism and a European Confederation’. He subsequently became involved in Brons’s party the British Democratic Party, established in February 2013.

John lived in London, and later Suffolk, before retiring to Yorkshire to live nearer his expanding family – three grandchildren, and five great grandchildren who survive him together with his son, daughter, and wife of 72 years Marion.

During periods away from politics John wrote four books.

Ten Miles from Anywhere (Hedgerow Publishing 1995), looked at the changes in a Suffolk village from the beginning of the 20th century.

Many Shades of Black, (New Millennium 1999), was Bean’s political memoirs up to that date.

His first novel Blood in the Square, which fictionalized some of his political experiences in the 1960s.

And in August 2016 his historical novel Trail of the Viking Finger (Troubador Publications).

Obituary – Thora Hallgrimsson (Margrét Þóra Hallgrímsdottir) 1930 – 2020

Dear Comrades, It is with great sadness that we must announce the death of Thora Hallgrimsson (Margrét Þóra Hallgrímsson or Hallgrímsdottir), the second wife of George Lincoln Rockwell. She passed away on August 27 of natural causes, at age 90.

Commander Rockwell’s former wife Thora (far right) seen here with (left to right) her grandson Björgólfur Hideaki Takefusa, her daughter Evelyn Bentína Björgólfsdóttir (née Rockwell), and her second husband Bjorgulfur Guthmundsson.

Commander Rockwell was stationed in Iceland in 1953, while serving with the US Navy during the Korean War. There he met the Icelandic beauty Thora Hallgrimsson at a diplomatic reception in the Norwegian embassy in Reykjavik. They were married in October of that year, and honeymooned at Berchtesgaden.

Thora bore LIncoln Rockwell three children: Lincoln Hallgrimur, Jeannie Margaret and Bettina Evelyn.

In 1958, Commander Rockwell began his political career as an open National Socialist. At that time,Thora and the young children were living with him in a small house in Arlington, Viriginia, that doubled as his headquarters. The building came under frequent attack, and fearing for the safety of his family, Rockwell agreed that she should return temporarily to Iceland until he could provide for secure accommodations in the US. Thora belonged to one of the wealthiest families in Iceland, and once back in Reykjavik, they put enormous pressure on her to divorce Rockwell, to which she finally acceded in 1961.

Thora was the great love of Commander Rockwell’s life. To the day of his death, he hoped for a reconciliation with her – but it was not to be.
She later became a leading figure in Icelandic society, and married the wealthiest man in Iceland, Bjorgulfur Guthmundsson.

Commander George Lincoln Rockwell (far right) at the famous Cotswold camp in 1962 with British national socialists including Colin Jordan and John Tyndall.

A longer account of her life and Commander Rockwell’s marriages will appear in the October issue of the NEW ORDER UPDATE. In the meantime, interested comrades may check out the Wikipedia page on her: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Margrét_Þóra_Hallgrímsson

88!
Martin Kerr – Chief of Staff – NEW ORDER

Editors note: In 2018 H&D published a five-part article about Colin Jordan (issues 82-86) based on MI5’s files concerning Jordan dating from 1941 to 1968 and declassified at the UK National Archives in November 2017. These files indicate that MI5 and Special Branch had failed to obtain significant advance information about the 1962 Cotswold camp, though throughout Jordan’s career various intelligence organisations kept a close eye on his (and WUNS’s) connections in Europe.

We later reproduced the full text of the Cotswold Agreements as an appendix to that series.

Despite the release of MI5 files, the wealthy family of Rockwell’s second wife, Icelandic heiress Thora Hallgrímsdottir, tried to suppress the history of her marriage to the American Nazi leader, by whom she had three children. The former Mrs Rockwell later married Icelandic tycoon Björgólfur Guðmundsson, who was the owner and chairman of West Ham United Football Club from 2006 to 2009.

Before her marriage to Rockwell, Thora Hallgrimsson / Hallgrimsdottir was a very close friend of British actor David Tomlinson, whose son (also David) was the judge presiding over the trial of London Forum founder Jez Turner at Southwark Crown Court, a few years ago, eventually sentencing Jez to 12 months imprisonment.

Eddy Morrison 1949-2020

Eddy Morrison 1949-2020

H&D greatly regret to announce the death of Eddy Morrison: proud Yorkshireman, veteran national socialist and a contributor to our magazine for many years. Eddy died on Wednesday following a fall at his home, a month before his 71st birthday which would have been 16th July.

A reprint of Eddy’s 2003 autobiography Memoirs of a Street Soldier was being launched to coincide with his birthday, but very sadly it now coincides with his death.

Educated at St Michael’s College, a Catholic grammar school in Leeds, Eddy Morrison had to leave school at 15 to earn a wage and support his family after his father was crippled in an industrial accident. Following teenage service with the RAF, he became an active racial nationalist in 1967 with the newly formed National Front, attending the NF’s first annual meeting at Conway Hall, Westminster in October that year. Though he had a great deal in common ideologically with the NF’s future leader John Tyndall, Eddy had been too young to be involved in the national socialist schisms of the early ’60s, so he was able to join the NF as an 18-year-old without any factional baggage.

In 1968 he succeeded Phil Stone as the NF’s Leeds branch organiser. Though he was to be a member – and indeed founder! – of numerous different parties and movements, Eddy’s ideology was to remain consistent for more than half a century. As he put it, he regarded national socialism and White racial nationalism as interchangeable terms.

In fact though he would often joke about the myriad organisations he had joined or founded, this is very much a reflection of our movement’s history. Unlike some other leading movement personalities such as Nick Griffin, Eddy did not blow with the prevailing wind, changing his ideological colours to suit personal advancement. Eddy remained Eddy.

In 1972 Eddy organised the Leeds branch of Colin Jordan’s British Movement, breaking away at the end of 1973 with a small group who formed the National Democratic Freedom Movement. Essentially Yorkshire-based, the NDFM quickly attracted a reputation for highly effective street activity. At a time when political violence was commonplace throughout the White world – often with the far left gaining the upper hand – Eddy’s street soldiers made much of West Yorkshire a “red-free zone”.

During 1975 the NDFM expanded, as Eddy recruited other national socialists from outside Yorkshire to expand the movement into a new British National Party. Though he was also to become a prominent organiser in John Tyndall’s BNP a few years later, this 1970s version was a completely different party.

During this period John Tyndall was engaged in a struggle for control of the NF, for a time losing the leadership to a Strasserite/populist faction led by former Conservative activist John Kingsley Read, so Eddy’s BNP attracted support from numerous national socialists who had quit the NF during this period.

The Morrison BNP continued and built on the NDFM’s fearsome reputation for taking control of the streets. It also became part of a growing national socialist network in Europe. German attorney Manfred Roeder was guest speaker at the BNP’s annual congress.

Once John Tyndall and Martin Webster had re-established control of the NF, it wasn’t long before Eddy Morrison and his BNP were invited to merge into the Front, and Eddy became the NF’s Yorkshire regional organiser. This period coincided with the international phenomenon of ‘punk rock’, in which Eddy had taken an early interest, attending early punk gigs including memorable appearances by the Sex Pistols in Manchester and Leeds.

He was quick to see the potential of this angry movement of working class rebellion (though of course it shocked more ‘respectable’ nationalists). As Eddy later wrote:
We either had to condemn Punk or use it. I chose the latter option and started a spoof fanzine called Punk Front which featured a NF logo with a safety pin in it. To my great surprise, Punk Front was a huge success and soon, especially in Leeds, NF members and supporters were going to the biggest Punk club around — the infamous F Club. I started to regularly go to the club and NF Punks were recruiting other punks. In a few months, the NF was the dominant political force on the big punk scene in Leeds. Music papers such as Sounds and the New Musical Express were taking an interest in us. Gary Bushell was sent up to look into the phenomenon. We had pro-NF letters published in many music papers and other punks started bringing out pro-NF fanzines. We even started two bands — the Ventz and the Dentists. Both these bands were to feature later on in the start of ‘Rock Against Communism.’

Eddy Morrison with Simon Sheppard at one of the latter’s many court appearances

Eddy Morrison could justifiably claim to have been the founder of the White racial nationalist music scene, which was later to expand under the late Ian Stuart into Blood & Honour.

Around the time of Eddy’s 30th birthday in 1979, British nationalism had one of its watershed moments when the National Front began to fall apart following disappointing election results. A large part of the last forty years of Eddy Morrison’s life was to involve his attempts to navigate treacherous political waters and maintain uncompromising national socialism in the UK.

This included years of activism in the BNP and later NF, punctuated by attempts to form breakaway movements such as the National Action Party, White Nationalist Party and British People’s Party. At other times Eddy attempted to build cross-factional alliances, and at one stage was a leading figure in the Spearhead Support Group, formed to build support for John Tyndall in his quest to recapture the BNP from Nick Griffin.

In these many activities Eddy could count on a loyal cadre of supporters, notably his Bradford-based comrade Kev Watmough – and it’s fair to say that Eddy was shocked to have outlived numerous fellow streetfighters such as Dave Brown and Chris ‘Weasel’ Ledger.

Eddy Morrison (far right!) at an H&D event in Blackburn, Lancashire: also in this photo (blue shirt, centre left) is his late comrade Dave Brown.

Latterly Eddy published the online magazine White Voice, as well as contributing to H&D – both as author, reviewer and quizmaster at social events! It is impossible in one brief online article to encompass the life of this uncompromising national socialist warrior, and for obvious reasons we have avoided speaking about Eddy’s family, of whom he was so proud and who will miss him greatly.

Needless to say, the next edition of H&D will contain a full obituary of our friend and comrade Eddy Morrison.

Cattle die, and kinsmen die. And so one dies oneself. One thing I know that never dies: The fame of a dead man’s deeds

14/88 Eddy!

(above and below) Eddy Morrison with H&D editor Mark Cotterill and fellow nationalists at a Remembrance Day ceremony in Darwen, Lancashire, 2006

Successful CJ / JT Memorial Meeting held in Leeds

This year’s John Tyndall Memorial Meeting was again held in Leeds (for the second year running) on Saturday November 23rd.

However, this year it was a joint Colin Jordan and John Tyndall Memorial meeting and was organised by the British Movement.

Heritage and Destiny were kindly invited to attend, and H&D deputy editor Peter Rushton was one of the main speakers, while editor Mark Cotterill manned the H&D literature table.

Steve Frost, National Secretary of British Movement

The attendance of around sixty (including three former Borough councillors – Dr. Jim Lewthwaite (Wyke ward, Bradford); Angela Clarke (Keighley West ward, Bradford); and Mark Cotterill (Meadowhead ward, Blackburn); and one former MEP, Andrew Brons (Yorkshire & Humber) – was very impressive. Most of those attending were BM members, but also half a dozen British Democrats, and a couple each from the National Front and English Democrats, plus the H&D team.

Peter Rushton, H&D
Dr Jim Lewthwaite,
Chairman, British Democrats
Andrew Brons, former MEP

The speakers included: Richard Edmonds (NF Directorate member, former BNP national organiser, and right-hand man to John Tyndall); Benny Bullman (long standing BM member and lead singer of the Nationalist band Whitelaw); Dr. Jim Lewthwaite (the chairman of the British Democrats); Andrew Brons (former MEP for Yorkshire); Peter Rushton (H&D deputy editor); Alec Suchi (nationalist climate change activist); and Steve Frost (BM National Secretary).

The meeting which was ably chaired by Tony (a local BM member of longstanding), was the second successful Leeds meeting in the same venue this year, and hopefully more will follow in the new year.

During the first interval a superb buffet of both hot and cold food, was laid on, by the BM’s Women’s Division. And during the second interval an auction of classic national socialist memorabilia was held, raising several hundred pounds for BM funds.

Both the BM and H&D had literature stalls which did a brisk trade throughout the afternoon, with H&D picking up a couple of new subscribers on top – which is always good.

Richard Edmonds, NF Directorate member and former BNP national organiser

As at most nationalist events, there was no trouble at all at the meeting, which was held in a good old-fashioned Yorkshire pub, in a White working-class area of Leeds – not the sort of the pub the posh yuppies from Hope Not Hate or Antifa would ever set foot in! But if they had they would have been met by a large BM security team – led by Jordan Pont – who were more than capable of showing them the door – if they had dared turn up!

BM produced a nice souvenir programme of the event. Copies are still available by writing to PO Box 6, Heckmondwike, Yorkshire, WF16 0XG; or email – sunwheelteam@gmail.com – or visit the BM website at – www.britishmovement.info

Some of the speakers and organisers at the end of the Leeds meeting

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