Lee Rigby – ten years gone but never forgotten
Ten years ago on 22nd May 2013 a brave young working-class Englishman – Lee Rigby, from Middleton, near Manchester – was butchered by two ‘British’ Muslim converts, the sons of Nigerian immigrants.
Lee Rigby was serving with the Royal Regiment of Fusiliers. His unit would once have been part of the Lancashire Fusiliers, a regiment with a proud history dating back centuries.
Fusilier Rigby was a drummer and machine-gunner who had served in Cyprus, Germany, and Afghanistan. At the time of his murder, he was working on recruitment and on duties at the Tower of London.
On 22nd May ten years ago, Lee Rigby was returning to his barracks after a day working at the Tower. His assailants attacked him with knives and a cleaver, attempting to behead him in the fashion of Islamist terrorists.
David Cameron, then Prime Minister, came out with the usual political banalities: “This country will be absolutely resolute in its stand against extremism and terror.”
Unfortunately the truth is that Cameron’s Conservative Party – just like its Labour opponents – has a far from resolute record of conciliating terrorists. Sinn Fein, political wing of the IRA that killed so many of Lee Rigby’s comrades over the years, is presently reaping the rewards of political cowardice in Whitehall and Westminster.
Lee Rigby put these traitors and cowards to shame. True Britons will honour his memory, on today’s anniversary and forever.
Dominique Venner – a hero of the True Europe
Ten years ago – on 21st May 2013 – a great French racial nationalist, Dominique Venner, committed suicide in dramatic circumstances at the Cathedral of Notre Dame.
Venner’s father had been part of Jacques Doriot’s pre-war nationalist party. He was himself politically active from the mid-1950s until his death, as one of the leading figures in an intellectual movement known as the Nouvelle Droite, together with Alain de Benoist, Pierre Krebs, and the late Guillaume Faye. The ND’s leaders later came to disagree with each other on some fundamental issues, but for the past sixty years their work has been among the highest quality contributions to European resistance.
Usually, racial nationalists should disapprove of pessimism, and especially suicide, since our racial nationalist ideology is a celebration of life and optimism.
Of course, some leading European nationalists have killed themselves in exceptional situations, but in today’s world we should not usually accept that suicide is a positive political option.
But Venner was 78 and very seriously ill. He wanted to make a final political gesture while he was able to do so.
Dominique Venner died as he had lived – as a hero of the True Europe.
Gains for TUV in Ulster council elections
Most results are now in from the local council elections in Northern Ireland, held on 18th May. These elections were postponed by a fortnight due to the STV proportional representation system, which meant that counting could not have been completed before the Coronation, had voting taken place on 4th May at the same time as the English elections.
As has previously been highlighted by H&D, Rishi Sunak’s supposedly ‘Conservative’ government seems happy to abandon the Union. Ministers made clear that they hoped unionist voters would swing away from the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP), led by Enoch Powell’s former campaign manager Sir Jeffrey Donaldson, towards parties that embrace Sunak’s sell-out agenda.
In fact DUP seems to have held on to most of its support, while there were significant gains for Traditional Unionist Voice (TUV), the party that refuses to surrender sovereignty to Dublin and rejects a “sea border” between Northern Ireland and the rest of the UK.
TUV won nine seats in total, a net gain of three. They held on to their five seats on the Mid & East Antrim Council; gained a seat in Cusher (a rural area of County Armagh); regained a seat in Ballymoney while gaining another in Causeway; and gained a seat in the Court area of Belfast.
The latter gain was especially symbolic, as Court DEA includes the Shankill and previously elected a councillor from the Progressive Unionist Party (PUP), a party formerly aligned with loyalist paramilitaries but which in recent years has pursued a ‘woke’ agenda.
Until a few months ago, TUV might have expected even greater gains. But the party’s leaders would argue that it has succeeded in pulling DUP back towards its traditional agenda.
This election was a disaster for the two arms of liberal/leftwing unionism. The once-powerful UUP’s vote across the province fell from 14.2% to a new low of 10.9%, and it lost 21 of its previous 75 council seats. While the PUP disappeared from the electoral map completely, and its future now seems in doubt.
When is a party a “major party”?
Many H&D readers will recently have received a fundraising email from Britain First, stating that they have been classed as a “major party” by the Electoral Commission and consequently must find £6,000 to pay for the auditing of their accounts.
Some might (wrongly) imagine that this “major party” status has something to do with election results or with the number of candidates that a party stands.
In fact it seems to be largely a financial matter. Any party whose income or expenditure (or both) is over £250,000 must file audited accounts, which are published on the Electoral Commission’s website.
The most recent accounts of this type relate to the year ending December 2021, when nineteen parties fell into this category.
Some of these are the obvious “major parties” but there were some interesting anomalies. For example, Traditional Unionist Voice (TUV), which by normal reckoning might be thought a “major party” in Northern Ireland, where its leader Jim Allister is a member of the Stormont Assembly, was not among the nineteen parties with turnover above £250,000.
However, a tiny vanity party – the London Real Party, formed to support the London mayoral campaign of American-born podcaster Brian Rose – had income of £280,114 and expenditure of £273,540.
Even a tiny Marxist sect, the Socialist Party of Great Britain, had income of £551,810.
But the most extraordinary anomaly is that the Reclaim Party, led by actor Laurence Fox, reported income of £1,850,002 – considerably more than Sinn Fein, Northern Ireland’s largest party, the long established political wing of the supposedly dormant terrorist IRA.
Sinn Fein’s reported income was £1,532,946.
Readers can judge for themselves which party’s donors (perhaps including unwilling donors in Sinn Fein’s case) obtained better value for money. Reclaim seems to have contested just three elections during 2021: receiving 1.9% in the London mayoral election, 0.3% in the Glasgow Pollok constituency at the Scottish parliamentary election; and a fraction under 1% at the North Shropshire parliamentary by-election.
Vanity politics: MP defects to ‘Reclaim’ party
This morning we saw a perfect example of this, when the MP for North West Leicestershire, Andrew Bridgen, defected to the Reclaim Party.
Bridgen has been a Tory MP since 2010 but was suspended from the parliamentary Conservative Party in January this year and expelled from the party three months later, after endorsing a series of bizarre conspiracy theories about the CoViD pandemic.
Some readers whose political knowledge depends on a social media echo chamber might be tempted to regard Bridgen as an anti-establishment hero. In fact aspects of his record indicate fairly clearly why Richard Tice and Reform UK (the main civic nationalist party) chose not to welcome him, despite the fact this would have given them an MP, and why he ended up joining a tiny vanity project like Reclaim.
Last year Bridgen was found repeatedly to have broken parliamentary rules on paid lobbying, including failure to declare financial interests. This included payments of £12,000 per year from a company based in Ghana.
Among many other questionable incidents, Bridgen has been involved in a long running financial disputes with his own relatives over his family business, which resulted in a High Court judge stating that the MP had “lied under oath and behaved in an abusive, arrogant and aggressive manner”, was “an unreliable and combative witness who tried to conceal his own misconduct”, and “gave evasive and argumentative answers and tangential speeches that avoided answering the questions”.
Some might think this is the sort of behaviour one should expect from Members of Parliament – but it is tragic that one of the few MPs to have broken with the mainstream should be someone of this sort, and that the defection should have occurred on a fringe, crank issue rather than on one of the many serious issues where the political establishment has betrayed our country.
Reclaim is not even a serious political party. There were over 8,000 local council seats contested at last week’s elections, and Reclaim had precisely zero candidates. It is an online vanity project, not a serious political party. So perhaps it is ideal for Andrew Bridgen.
Reclaim was created during 2020-2021 by the actor Laurence Fox, based on a pro-Brexit party founded during 2019 by Fox’s main donor, billionaire financier Jeremy Hosking.
Paris march remembers Sebastien Deyzieu
On Saturday French patriots from a cross-party coalition held a march in central Paris to remember their comrade Sebastien Deyzieu, who died during a demonstration in 1994.
Deyzieu was part of a demonstration that sought to highlight disastrous consequences of the Allied invasion of Europe and the post-1945 political settlement – Soviet Russian domination of Eastern Europe and American global capitalist domination of Western Europe.
Parisian authorities banned this May 1994 event, organised by the nationalist student group Groupe Union Défense (GUD), and Deyzieu was killed during an ensuing confrontation with police.
Every year since then, GUD has been part of a cross-party ‘9th May Committee’ that organises a memorial event.
This year the French left and Zionist groups have reacted with predictably hysterical demands that the march should have been banned.
President Macron and his government are among the most fearful and unpopular of Europe’s rulers. Yesterday all counter-demonstrations were banned as Macron attended events to commemorate the “victory” over National Socialist Germany on May 8th 1945. Macron also travelled to Lyon yesterday to pay tribute to the “Resistance hero” Jean Moulin, who was arrested by the Gestapo in 1943 and died during interrogation.
Rival biographies in recent decades have suggested either that Moulin was himself a Kremlin agent, or that he was betrayed by communist rivals within the “Resistance”.
Perhaps that historical debate over Moulin will never be resolved. But what we do know is that the “victory” of 1945 inaugurated decades of tyranny, from which Europe is only now beginning to emerge. Sebastien Deyzieu is a hero of the True Europe whose spirit has survived that postwar tyranny.
H&D joins patriots across Europe in saluting his memory.
H&D pulls no punches in post-election analysis
After several days of reflection on last week’s local elections. H&D‘s assistant editor Peter Rushton has written a hard-hitting analysis of the results, seeking to draw some long overdue, hard lessons for our movement.
Peter has a long record of practical electoral activism as well as academic analysis. Click here to read his new article.
Facts and figures on the election can be found here.
Time for nationalists to decide: are we serious?
Professional politicians are notorious for ‘spinning’ even the most unfavourable election results, looking for a silver lining to the darkest clouds.
As racial nationalists, we have to be more honest than these ‘spin doctors’. Last week’s elections were appalling. They reflected years of decline, years of factional division, years of vanity, years of crank obsessions, years of tolerating substandard conduct within our ranks.
One of the most decent and intelligent men in nationalism, Jim Lewthwaite, who was elected BNP councillor for Wyke ward in Bradford with 1,583 votes in 2004, and was runner-up with 701 votes in the same ward as a British Democrat candidate in 2019, polled only 140 votes (5.1%) in Wyke this year.
To his credit, Jim finished ahead of a Reform UK candidate, but the verdict of most of his old voters was “none of the above”.
In Hollinwood ward, Oldham, National Housing Party leader John Lawrence polled 205 votes (7.6%). Though far from the worst result in 2023, this followed twenty years of nationalist decline in Hollinwood and the surrounding area. In 2002 Oldham BNP organiser Mick Treacy achieved 736 votes (23.9%) here; a year later this fell slightly to 503 votes (22.8%) and a much diminished and divided BNP never contested Hollinwood again.
UKIP eventually picked up the disillusioned White working class vote in Hollinwood, polling 37.2% in 2014, 28.9% in 2015, 30.3% in 2016, and 25.9% in 2019.
John Lawrence and NHP grew out of activity in the Hollinwood area by ‘Tommy Robinson’ (formerly of the EDL). The party is anti-immigration though non-‘racist’. In 2022 Lawrence polled 174 votes (10.1%), falling to just 59 votes (3.7%) in a misfiring by-election campaign last November, and now bouncing back slightly to 7.6% this year.
For many reasons, partly connected to allegations of local government corruption and ‘grooming’ scandals, there should be enormous potential for racial nationalism in this ward and in the rest of Oldham. Yet quite clearly that potential is not being mined. This year three Asian Conservatives were elected in Hollinwood! The new Tory councillors include Kamran Ghafoor, who was convicted and fined in 2012 for offences under the Housing Act, after failing to ensure that a property he rented out was safe to live in.
Another nationalist failure was in Swanscombe ward, Dartford, where Britain First leader Paul Golding polled a fraction under 5%. Britain First is an anti-Islam, anti-immigration, but multiracialist party that (like the NHP) has recruited both from the EDL scene and among ex-BNP activists such as Golding himself. Golding had no opposition from Reform UK, UKIP or any of its splinter parties. This was a ward where UKIP polled 16.5% in 2019 and even higher votes in earlier years, yet despite fighting only seven wards across the whole of England this year, Britain First polled less than 5% here.
Compared to past years, when many of our potential voters were seduced either by UKIP, the Brexit Party, or Boris Johnson’s Tories, nationalists ought to have been pushing at an open door this year.
Rishi Sunak’s Tories have far less appeal to White working class Britons than their counterparts had in the Boris Johnson era. Brexit is no longer an issue, immigration remains out of control, and lower income families are hard-pressed by the cost of living crisis.
Yet British nationalism has suffered such damage (partly self-inflicted) during the past decade that hardly any of our candidates made a serious impact with voters.
There were very few honourable exceptions. Julian Leppert was an excellent councillor in Epping Forest, and although he lost his seat after four years on the council, his result (25.2%) stood out from a generally dismal crowd.
Yet even here, the question must be asked: why did the British Democrats (Julian’s party for the past year since the closure of For Britain) not begin leafletting the moment he joined their party?
Given that there were no elections in London this year, why were there not more activists out on the streets of Waltham Abbey for months before the campaign formally started, introducing the Brit Dems and highlighting Julian’s excellent record of fighting for local residents? (Again there are a few honourable exceptions: several Londoners did make the effort and should be commended for continuing to fly the flag for nationalism and avoiding disillusionment.)
Why are many nationalists in 2023 happier to protest about drag queens, or go on marches to promote conspiracy theories about CoViD, while seeming to lose interest in serious racial nationalism – especially the essential hard slog of election campaigning?
To be fair, the British Democrats have made considerable progress during the last year or two, recruiting several valuable activists. The real problems date back more than a decade, to the rapid collapse of Nick Griffin’s BNP.
When Andrew Brons narrowly failed to oust Griffin as BNP chairman in the leadership election of July 2011, it was obvious that a new party would soon be needed, yet it took years to get that party off the ground. More than 2,300 BNP members voted in that leadership election: 1,157 for Griffin and 1,148 for Brons. Probably fewer than 100 of these are today active in any nationalist party.
During recent weeks there have been arguments between Patriotic Alternative leaders and some of their former colleagues, now in the Homeland Party, about whether PA has made sufficient efforts to register as a political party, and to convert its undoubted success online into “real world” activity.
I don’t intend to take sides in that argument, because I don’t know the full facts.
But questions need to be asked as to why so many nationalists are happier on social media than on doorsteps. This applies to civic nationalists in Reform UK, UKIP and its splinters, even more than to racial nationalists.
Part of the problem is defeatism, engendered by a style of politics that overemphasises conspiracies and the presumed power of our enemies.
Of course we face great obstacles – legal, financial, and political – but these are far from insuperable. Nationalist campaigns have repeatedly punched above our weight and shocked the political establishment – especially in Burnley, Oldham, Blackburn, Barking & Dagenham and many other council areas during the 2000s – but for whatever reason, we no longer seem capable of delivering at the ballot box.
Some nationalists argue that elections are a waste of time, but they have so far failed to explain an alternative strategy.
As far back as the 1980s, Steve Brady (then a member of the National Front Directorate) explained a “ladder strategy” by which nationalists could establish networks of local branches by building on local community campaigning. Elections are certainly not the only element of this strategy, but if nationalists aren’t capable of organising a serious local election campaign, how are any of us supposed to believe that they can lead a racial nationalist revolution?
As we have consistently argued in H&D, there are only two good reasons to be involved in politics. First, to present an ideologically solid solution to the problems of our race and nation, educating the best of our new recruits. Second, to build towards gaining power, locally and eventually nationally, so as to put this ideology into action.
Sometimes one of these objectives has to be prioritised over the other; sometimes they can work in parallel; sometimes different nationalists have to devote their efforts to one or the other.
Tragically what we are left with in 2023 is a movement that too often fulfils neither objective – instead abandoning serious ideology to pursue crank fads (often imported online from the USA) that are of no relevance to the racial nationalist cause, but also have no substantial appeal to the British electorate.
Three good examples are a trio of intellectually flimsy, unBritish, indeed anti-British and anti-European political cults: Trumpism, anti-vaxxism, and Putinism.
If any individual nationalist truly believes that Donald Trump presents a genuine challenge to the New World Order; or that vaccinations and even the pandemic itself were some sort of scam or conspiracy; or that the brutal anti-European dictator Vladimir Putin is in some sense a champion of traditional European values – then they are welcome to pursue these eccentric views.
But once any or all of these cults infect a nationalist party or movement, they become a toxic threat to our cause. The vast majority of British voters will never believe that CoViD vaccinations were a mass poisoning plot; they will never take Donald Trump seriously; and they will never support Putin’s semi-Asiatic hordes.
The inevitable unpopularity of these causes would not matter if any of them were essential to our core racial nationalist ideology: but they aren’t. At best they are a distraction, at worst a fatal liability.
Urgent priorities for rebuilding nationalism in 2023 should involve identifying topical issues in target wards: questions of immediate local concern that can be explained to voters in ways that make the underlying ideology of racial nationalism clearly relevant to their daily lives.
We have the great advantage that truth is on our side, and truth cannot be suppressed forever. And we should avoid the tempting excuse that the system is rigged, or that ‘they’ control everything so there’s no point in any form of practical resistance other than ranting on social media.
The political conspirator Cassius, in Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar, tells a comrade:
“The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars
But in ourselves, that we are underlings.“
In 2023 racial nationalists should not blame the system, or the media, or our opponents. Such obstacles will always exist. But with sufficient will and intelligence, they can be overcome.
Vivat Rex Carolus!
The UK’s racial nationalist movement – battered and bruised after a grim set of election results this week – will have had mixed feelings about today’s Coronation of King Charles III.
Amid the inevitable wokeness, welcome elements of British tradition remained visible and audible throughout the event.
The spirit of the United Kingdom, the heritage of England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland, is still alive.
And the same is true of racial nationalism in these dark times.
It will very soon be time for our movement to face some hard truths. This website and forthcoming issues of our magazine will not shy away from expressing these truths in strong terms, even at the risk of offending some readers.
But for today, we wish our new King well, and hope that he and his fellow Britons can interpret the Archbishop’s words at the Enthronement in terms that ensure loyalty to the Union, Race and Nation.
Stand firm, and hold fast from henceforth this seat of royal dignity, which is yours by the authority of Almighty God.
May that same God, whose throne endures for ever, establish your throne in righteousness, that it may stand fast for evermore.
Local Elections 2023
for updated list of this year’s nationalist results, click here
England’s last racial nationalist councillor – Julian Leppert in Waltham Abbey Paternoster ward, Epping Forest – was defeated in Thursday’s elections. Julian polled 187 votes (25.2%), which is likely to be the best nationalist election result this year, but lost his seat to a Conservative candidate.
This year Julian was standing as a British Democrat, having been elected four years ago for the now-defunct For Britain Movement (and having been a BNP councillor a decade ago).
Most of England held local elections on 4th May – a first chance for voters to give a verdict on the latest reinvention of the Conservative Party under Prime Minister Rishi Sunak. These elections were also a final chance for Reform UK, the civic nationalist party that grew out of Nigel Farage’s Brexit Party but has so far failed to make any serious impact.
For H&D readers, one of the most interesting results was in Walkden North ward, Salford, where Ashlea Simon of Britain First polled 405 votes (18.2%).
This was down from 508 votes (21.6%) last year, but realistically it was another good result for Ms Simon and her party, given that this year they faced opposition from Reform UK, who finished bottom of the poll with only 68 votes (3.0%).
Britain First focused a great deal of effort on this Salford campaign, and the result contrasted with nearby Broadheath ward, Trafford, where their candidate Donald Southworth polled 153 votes (3.6%). Paul Harding managed 214 votes (13.1%) in Hockley & Ashingdon ward, Rochford; Nick Lambert 108 votes (12.6%) in Ballard ward, New Forest; and Nick Scanlon 61 votes (10.2%) in Darenth ward, Dartford. The Britain First candidates in Bideford South ward, Torridge, polled 15%, benefiting from the fact that the Tories did not contest the ward. Ironically the second-worst Britain First result was for their leader Paul Golding, who polled 6.9% in Swanscombe ward, Dartford.
Former BNP councillor Graham Partner achieved another of the best nationalist results overnight, with 94 votes (15.9%) as independent candidate for Hermitage ward, NW Leicestershire. Another nationalist standing without a party label was David Hyden, backed by activists from the new Homeland Party: he polled 81 votes (5.7%) in Cannock South ward, Cannock Chase.
The National Front’s sole candidate this year was Tim Knowles, who polled 40 votes (1.8%) in Codnor, Langley Mill & Aldercar, Amber Valley.
One of England’s newest (civic) nationalist parties – the National Housing Party UK – had three candidates this year. Callum Leat polled 228 votes (10.3%) in Dodington ward, South Gloucestershire. Former BNP and For Britain Movement activist Gary Bergin polled 149 votes (4.1%) in Claughton ward, Wirral. And NHPUK leader John Lawrence polled 205 votes (7.6%) in Hollinwood ward, Oldham.
Dr Andrew Emerson, a former BNP candidate who has for some years been the sole candidate of his own small party Patria, polled 6.4% in Chichester East ward, Chichester.
The first British Democrat results overnight were in Essex. In Kursaal ward, Southend, former East London BNP activist Steve Smith polled 42 votes (2.6%), finishing narrowly ahead of a candidate from the Heritage Party (a civic nationalist splinter from UKIP) who polled 2.1%. Mr Smith’s Brit Dem colleague Chris Bateman fared slightly better in Laindon Park ward, Basildon, with 89 votes (4.2%).
The British Democrats had better news during today’s counts, with Julian Leppert’s 25.2% (see above) being easily the best nationalist result this year, though David Haslett faced a tough campaign in the multiracial Saffron ward, Leicester, and polled 34 votes (1.9%). In Wyke ward, Bradford, Brit Dem leader Dr Jim Lewthwaite polled 140 votes (5.1%), finishing five votes ahead of a Reform UK opponent.
Some very poor overnight results for Reform UK indicated that they have very little genuine local activism, despite high profile backing at national level from the likes of Nigel Farage and GB News. (Speaking of GB News, one of their political commentators Sophie Corcoran was heavily defeated as Tory candidate for Chadwell St Mary ward, Thurrock.)
Even in Lichfield, where former Tory mayor Barry Gwilt defected to Reform UK earlier this year, neither Mr Gwilt nor any other Reform UK candidate stood for election this week.
The only good news for Reform UK so far has been in by far their best branch – Derby – where they retained six seats across their two wards, Alvaston North and Alvaston South.
One of the very few really active Reform UK branches is in Bolton, where they had 34 candidates, but none were elected. (Their strongest Bolton vote was 17% in Farnworth North.)
Even in areas such as Lincolnshire’s South Kesteven council (which includes Margaret Thatcher’s birthplace Grantham), where Sunak’s Conservatives lost many votes and seats, the ‘protest vote’ went to independents rather than to Reform UK or any of the UKIP splinter parties (two of which have already closed down). It seems that the Farage era is very definitely over.
Further confirmation of this came from Boston, another Lincolnshire council, which was one of the main UKIP and Brexit Party target areas of the past decade. UKIP lost their last remaining Boston council seat yesterday. Reform UK contested just one Boston ward, where they finished with only 4%, behind an English Democrat candidate on 7%.
English Democrat leader Robin Tilbrook polled 10.3% in Shelley ward, Epping Forest. Nationwide the EDs had five candidates, including Steve and Val Morris in Bury who polled 6.1% and 2.9% respectively.
Election counts continued this afternoon. H&D will have full reports and analysis on results as they arrive throughout the day.
(There were no elections this week in Scotland or Wales. Northern Ireland’s local elections are on 18th May.)
