Ex-NF ‘political soldier’ closes down party
Phil Andrews (far right) on the NF’s 1986 Remembrance Day march alongside fellow activists from the ‘political soldier’ faction including (left to right) Derek Holland, Graham Williamson and Nick Griffin
Phil Andrews was one of the leading young activists in the National Front during the 1980s, closely associated with the ‘political soldier’ or ‘cadre’ faction alongside Derek Holland, Nick Griffin and the Italian fugitive Roberto Fiore. They were perhaps best known for their support of the Libyan dictator Colonel Gadaffi.
This faction became the ‘International Third Position’ at the end of the 1980s, and after its collapse Phil Andrews renounced nationalism while staying in politics as a community activist in West London.
Mr Andrews himself was elected as a councillor and the residents group he helped create – known as the Independent Community Group – eventually held the balance of power with six seats in the London Borough of Hounslow. Ironically (for someone who was once counted among the most ‘radical’ of NF activists), Cllr Andrews and his colleagues used their positions to form a local coalition with the Conservatives.
In 2010 all of the ICG councillors were defeated and they failed to regain any seats at the next elections in 2014. Now the party has been wound up.
Phil Andrews (left) with two fellow ICG candidates during their 2014 election campaign. Neither of his colleagues had any NF connections.
Phil Andrews told his local newspaper:
“We are clearly entering into a new phase. Where we had hoped to persuade the powers that be that engagement with an active and organised community could be mutually beneficial, what we appear to have done is to have hardened attitudes.
“Their (Hounslow Labour Party) response to losing elections to local residents was to draft in outside help, using the sophisticated national machine at their disposal to smother local efforts.
“And in office their attitude has been to deceive, coerce and bully rather than to listen, as the disgraceful harassment of community activist Paul Slattery in Brentford has demonstrated.
“In response, the community has mobilised, but that mobilisation has risen organically from a variety of sources rather than from one organised body. That mobilisation needs to be supported and its momentum maintained. To be frank the ICG approach had become dated and predictable.”
Media smear merchants find new target
The decline of the BNP has left the well-financed anti-fascist industry searching for a new target to justify their existence and stimulate their donors. While UKIP (thanks to the undeniable eccentricity of several leading activists and candidates) has been the main victim, Channel 4 News this week discovered a new scandal of supposed covert “racism” – the tiny and imperfectly formed National Liberal Party.
In one sense the media smearmongers are correct: the NLP is a remnant of the National Front splits of the 1980s. In 1983 a young radical faction (which included future BNP chairman Nick Griffin) ousted the NF’s de facto leader Martin Webster, only to suffer their own split in 1986. Half of the Front (including Griffin) became the “political soldiers”, following various continental ideologies including the “long live death” cult of Romania’s Corneliu Codreanu. The other half took a more pragmatic, populist line and became known as the Flag Group, named after the party newspaper they created after losing control of National Front News to their rivals.
The “political soldiers” hit the headlines for seeking funds from the Libyan dictator Col. Gadaffi – Griffin and his then allies Derek Holland and Patrick Harrington even travelled to Libya in pursuit of cash but returned only with copies of Gadaffi’s tract The Green Book, which was sold for years to come at NF meetings.
Then in 1988 the “political soldiers” themselves split: Griffin, Holland and their Italian mentor Roberto Fiore went on to form the International Third Position, increasingly influenced by traditionalist Catholic theology; while Harrington formed Third Way with a handful of allies including Graham Williamson from Blackpool, and David Kerr from Ulster.
Eventually Third Way spawned the National Liberal Party, but Harrington later drifted back to the BNP, rejoining his old ally/enemy Nick Griffin. The NLP became ever more multiracialist, and Williamson built especially close alliances with Tamils and Sikhs. In some ways this was consistent with 1980s NF “third position” ideology, which focused on building coalitions with oppressed Third World minorities against our common enemies.
Fast forward a couple of decades, and we reach the latest “exposé” by Channel 4 News. The National Liberals are probably right to conclude that this was inspired by their powerful enemies in India, since the NLP isn’t significant enough to have attracted the attention of the more usual financiers of “anti-fascism”.
But Channel 4 have missed the real scandal: the Nat Libs’ Griffin-style “donate now” button, which features images of their supposed political heroes: Lord Rosebery, Joseph Chamberlain and Leslie Hore-Belisha.
It’s weird enough to base your politics on an imagined early/mid 20th century tradition, throwing Rosebery, Chamberlain and Hore-Belisha together as though they form an ideological continuum.
But if you are going to idolise early/mid 20th century politicians (which isn’t entirely unknown in nationalist circles) it’s a good idea to spell their names correctly!!!
The Nat Libs manage to misspell two of the three: referring to “Roseberry”, Chamberlain and “Hoare-Belisha”.
As we’ve seen recently, it’s easy to make errors on websites, but even so….
And ironically the NLP’s founders probably imagined they were being smart by proclaiming admiration for Rosebery and Hore-Belisha, since they both had Jewish connections. Rosebery married a Rothschild heiress, while Hore-Belisha was born a Jew (Isaac Leslie Belisha). Harrington and Williamson presumably hoped this kosher piety by proxy would disarm media attacks: it didn’t work too well, did it?
By-election candidates announced
Paul Thompson, EFP candidate for Harrowgate Hill
England First Party candidate Paul Thompson will contest the forthcoming Darlington Council by-election in Harrowgate Hill ward on 12th April.
The by-election follows the imprisonment of former Labour councillor Mark Burton, who admitted sexual assault of a schoolgirl and downloading child porn onto his council computer.
Further details of the campaign will appear here soon: anyone wishing to assist with leaflets and canvassing should email englandfirstparty@yahoo.com
Neil Craig, Democratic Nationalists candidate for Bradford West
Meanwhile the Democratic Nationalists have announced that Neil Craig will contest the parliamentary by-election in Bradford West on 29th March. This follows the retirement of Labour MP Marsha Singh.
The declining British National Party will have no candidates in either by-election.
Nationalist road cleanup gets moves away from multi-racial church
Voluntary ‘highway adoption’ sounds like a great idea – certainly not going to happen in England though!
DENVER POST, 29 Jan 2010: Gary Randall wasn’t happy when he heard that a white supremacist group would be cleaning a stretch of U.S. 85 running past Elmwood Baptist Church, where he is pastor.
For one thing, the church has a contract with the Colorado Department of Transportation to clean the road as part of the Adopt-a-Highway program. But even more important, “I just didn’t want them by our church because it is multiracial and our members are uncomfortable with anything like that,” he said.
Randall complained to CDOT and on Wednesday the agency announced that the National Socialist Movement would adopt a different part of U.S. 85, from Bridge Street to just south of 168th Avenue.
