The new Minister for Refugees and the anti-fascist thug

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.

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.

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.

Two legends of British Nationalism – John Tyndall reviews John Bean

John Bean – one of H&D‘s oldest subscribers – died on November 9th last year and his obituary by our assistant editor Peter Rushton appeared in our January 2022 issue (#106).

A large part of postwar British nationalist history involves John Bean and his sometime ally, sometime rival John Tyndall, former chairman of the National Front and British National Party, who was a great friend of H&D until his death in July 2005 and remains an inspiration today.

In the November 1999 issue of his journal Spearhead, John Tyndall reviewed John Bean’s memoir Many Shades of Black, and as an addition to our memorial tribute we reprint that review below: it serves as a useful introduction for younger readers to the sometimes tangled history of our movement in the decades after 1960.

MEMORIES AND MYTHS

John Tyndall reviews a political autobiography which revives some ancient controversies

It is often said to be the custom of retired war generals to write their memoirs, justifying their decisions and answering their critics. This is fair enough; we are all human, and we all have a disposition to do it – whether or not the chronicle of events in which we have been involved ever actually gets into print.

One such chronicle which has got into print has recently been produced by John Bean, a veteran nationalist. In the case of the writer, the war has been a political one – to be precise, the same war as that in which I myself have been engaged over a largely overlapping period: the struggle of national and patriotic forces in Britain against those of liberalism, globalism and multi-racialism. John Bean and I have at various times been allies and antagonists in that struggle, mostly the former. Needless to say, the antagonisms have been the consequence of tactical differences rather than ones of principle.

Many Shades of Black is easy to read, quite fascinating to the connoisseur of the history of the British nationalist movement and seldom proceeding far without glimpses of the rich sense of humour that is one of my abiding memories of JB. By far the best in my opinion (although it may offend some) occurs very early in the book when the writer speaks, tongue in cheek, of his part in winning World War II. Alluding to Germany’s führer, he says:–

“Sheltering in his Berlin bunker, he was told that the British and American armies were pouring over the Rhine and the Russians were hammering on the gates of Berlin. Then came the telegram (a month late) that John Bean had joined the RAF. Hitler shot himself.”

Just too late too see any action in the war, John Bean subsequently did his national service in the Royal Navy. But we are running ahead of ourselves. The first chapter covers the author’s childhood and adolescence, spent mainly in the South London suburbs, his experience of the wartime Blitz and his consequent evacuation, first to Devon and later to the Lake District; his rather scampish propensity as a young boy to land himself in trouble; and an early political flirtation with communism, which he soon grew out of.

There then follows an account, with some amusing anecdotes, of the author’s service life, including a visit to Trinidad. This was John Bean’s first acquaintance with the non-White races, and it was instructive. Of it, he says:–

“More than one-third of the Trinidadian population at that time were descendants of indentured labourers from India. The remainder were mainly descendants of African slaves, with a fair proportion of French Creoles, British and Spanish colonists, and quite a few who are a combination of the lot. But it was always the African descendant who ended up as the inhabitant of the shanty hut.
“The Chinese had a virtual monopoly in general stores and the wholesale trade of domestic articles. The Indians controlled all taxicabs, public transport and the cinemas; and the Portuguese the rum industry. In the face of these closed shops the black Trinidadians had nothing left but to labour in the sugar-cane fields, a position that has changed little today.”

Was this the consequence of some kind of ‘racist’ oppression or was it just the natural order? Said the author a little further on:–

“We… began to accept the view of a number of Indian, Portuguese and Spanish-origin Trinidadians that to a certain extent many of the inhabitants of the shanty towns were there of their own choosing. It is all a question of values. Many of them considered it is better to spend their hard-earned cash on a gaily coloured new shirt or a bottle of rum rather than waste it on rent for shelter in such an equable climate…”

Back in civilian life, John Bean eventually found employment as a civilian technician in the paint industry, which soon took him to India. Then still something of a liberal, he expected to find the local population amicably disposed to Britons after having recently acquired their independence from the Raj, but: –

“It was a great disappointment to find, instead of goodwill, the honeymoon atmosphere prophesied by liberal journalusts, an abundance of criticisms, open abuse and sometimes precocious advice on how Britain should run her affairs.”

So what had happened? Simple. The young industrial chemist was beholding people who respected power – specifically the power of the White Man. Once this power had been relinquished, that same White Man, far from being regarded with friendliness, was despised for his weakness and treated accordingly.

Speaking of these experiences in exotic parts, the writer says in conclusion to the second chapter in which they are described:–

“I had become aware of the racial differences that had created the various cultures of mankind. This made me a racialist, but certainly not a ‘race hater’. Twenty years of radical right activity were to make me realise that there can be, unfortunately, a rather narrow dividing line.”

Why the need for this concluding statement? Of course, racial consciousness, like every other idea, can be pushed to extremes, but that does not invalidate it. Here we encounter a tendency among racial patriots, by no means confined to the author of Many Shades of Black: a slightly apologetic feeling of guilt for a sentiment over which one should never feel guilty nor apologise but should assert with constant firmness and with no ‘ifs’ nor ‘buts’, while at the same time naturally avoiding language that is crude or insulting.

Returning to Britain after a spell abroad, John Bean appears to have undergone an experience which many share after having been away for a while: a tendency to look at their own country in a new way, often a more critical way than in the past. Perhaps this is just the natural consequence of the vivid reminder that there is a great big world outside, of which we are only a part: a world in which we have to compete, in which not everybody loves us or feels they owe us anything. I recall, as if it were only yesterday, similar impressions in my own case after two years as a national serviceman in Germany.

Here, in a chapter headed ‘Blackshirt apprentice’, the writer relates his concern about the changing human landscape in the country which, like so many others, he irritatingly refers to as ‘England’. It leads him into radical politics, and in 1950 we find him in the party of Sir Oswald Mosley, now called Union Movement.

After a few years came disillusionment. Mosley himself remained a fascinating figure, admired for both his intelligence and his courage; but the types of people he seemed mostly to recruit were a different matter (an impression I myself shared when I began an examination of the movement, without ever joining it, a short time afterwards).

The Mosleyites were under constant physical attack by communists and also by members of a Jewish gang known then as the 43 Group. They quite rightly defended themselves, and fights became a regular feature of their meetings and public demonstrations. Here there arose a problem which has been the subject of dispute on the radical right to this day.

The mass media, even then, had been well drilled to deny publicity to Mosley’s people in any shape or form which focused serious attention on their policies. Their only hope of getting in the news, therefore, lay in the frequent brawls that attended their activities. For this they should not have been blamed. The normal media boycott was not their fault, any more than was the organised violence that pursued them on the streets and in the meeting halls. If the violence served to win them public attention, whereby then people would enquire into their policies and obtain a fairer picture of what they actually stood for, who could blame them for taking advantage of this? An army fighting a guerrilla war in occupied territory, in which most normal rights – including that of receiving a fair hearing – are denied to it, should not be reproached for seizing upon every available weapon necessary for survival. That is the way it is in the world of real politics.

But the weapon was double-edged. The reputation for violence which, in the first place quite unfairly, pursued Mosley’s followers made them acquire an image which gave out a number of wrong signals to would-be recruits. If the perpetrators of the violence happened, as was often the case, to be Jewish, certain further signals would be emitted. Says John Bean, commenting on this tendency:–

“…whenever they received press publicity over some skirmish in the East End, the thinking public were assured just that much more of their hooligan and mob-like character. For the most part, the only recruits such publicity gained were political morons looking for excitement, or those people who suffer from a brand of anti-semitism that is not even ‘blessed’ with a political foundation but is sheerly social anti-semitism often based on jealousy.”

In later years, my own experiences bore out some – though not all – of the author’s conclusions, with the difference of detail that the focus then centred on black and Asian, rather than Jewish, people. John Bean here speaks of “the thinking public”, but I would challenge his use of this term. People who think really seriously about political matters will not be deterred from seeking information about a political group by the mere fact that violence often seems to attend its activities; they will enquire into the source of the violence, taking care to ascertain whether the group that is the object of their interest is responsible for it or merely its victim. When I was leading the National Front in the 1970s, the rowdyism that was almost constantly present when we showed ourselves in public in any prominent way probably did put off some people who would otherwise have been inclined to support us. But there were nevertheless a good many who saw through media propaganda, which tended to lump us together with our attackers as if we were equally responsible for the trouble, and recognised quite clearly where the real blame lay. We attracted large numbers of very decent, intelligent and politically serious Britons to our cause, while also picking up just a few who joined for other, less commendable, reasons.

It must be remembered that back in those times, as today, hooligan behaviour by those on the political left was a familiar phenomenon by no means confined to occasions where nationalists were the targets. In quite recent memory was the Battle of Grosvenor Square, where a left-wing mob besieged the American Embassy, taking its anger and hysteria out on the police who were there to protect it. There was the violent picketing of docks and factories arising out of industrial disputes. There were the Greenham Common disturbances, as well as those surrounding the miners’ strike. Later there were the poll-tax riots, not to forget the racial conflagrations of the 1980s which not even the biased media could attribute to any White ‘racist’ intervention. Members of the British public with anything resembling brains are well used to these left-wing, ‘anti-racist’ and often anti-police tactics, and are perfectly capable of perceiving their presence behind organised attacks on patriots. Our experience of the ’70s was that, when the NF was targeted by the same gangs, that became, in many eyes, almost a recommendation rather than a deterrent. “If that crowd are against you, you must be doing something right!” was a comment that I heard frequently during those years. They were years of quite spectacular recruitment to the nationalist cause, in which the vast majority were ordinary folk not looking for punch-ups, nor motivated by irrational hatred towards other races, but concerned to preserve their country’s identity and prepared to face physical attacks if that was necessary in the excercise of their freedoms.

There nevertheless is some validity in what John Bean has said on this matter, albeit that the issue can be grossly oversimplified. Violence can attract those with a natural disposition towards it, and public discussion of the race issue can appeal to negative sentiments of hate just as to positive ones of love. It is all a matter of how carefully the party leadership exercises a fine-tuning balance on such matters, how it regulates the choice of what is said and what is done. I believe that we got the balance very nearly right in the 1970s – not 100% right, perhaps, but much more right than wrong. It could well be that Mosley’s party failed, in its time, to achieve this balance; and that, at the end of the day, has to be down to Mosley himself.

On the rebound from Mosley, John Bean was persuaded by some members of his family to join the Tories, and enlisted as a member in the Barnes branch, in South West London. This venture lasted precisely two months. From the standpoint of his social ideas, JB might have found compatibility with Labour but, as he states, “I had joined the Conservative Party because it was more of a home for patriots and nationalists…” But the tiny horizons of his fellow Tories soon dismayed him. This, he says:

“…was a new world of politics, where my fellow members’ minds seemed dominated by minutes of the previous meetings, points of order related to local drainage and other trivia, and a lack of interest in looking at policies now that the country was ‘back in the safe hands of the Conservatives’ under Churchill…”

Of course, this preoccupation with the minute and the parochial thoroughly suited the party chiefs, as it does down to this day. The Tory rank and file have always been notoriously docile in their acceptance of the party line as determined by their supposed superiors at Central Office. Again, it seemed to have been a case of like calling out to like. Just as the regular brawls in which Mosleyites were constantly engaged tended to attract belligerent spirits addicted to brawling, so did the polite tameness of constituency Tories have the habit of pulling in the equally tame. This has always been the problem with modern Conservatism. Even where glimmerings of the political ‘light’ may occasionally filter through the general fog, the impulse to action is paralysed due to the prevailing atmosphere of genteel inertia and the wholly undynamic types it encourages.

Bean was now looking for an organisation outside the political mainstream but not, in his own words, “irrevocably tarred with the brush of anti-semitism and fascism as Mosley’s movement was.” Here we see him pursuing a chimera that has obsessed and frustrated countless thousands of basically sound patriots in Britain, while at the same time serving as a constant source of friction between people who should be united. The truth is that the ‘brush’ he so much rejected – more out of tactical considerations than of personal conviction – is something that is always going to ‘tar’ genuine patriotic organisations as long as effective power in Britain lies with the liberal-globalist establishment and as long as the news media remain in that establishment’s hands.

Of course, those patriotic organisations should not go out of their way to get ‘tarred’ beyond normal expectation. They should exclude, as far as possible, campaigning methods and imagery which positively invite the media to draw such connections. This goes without saying, and I have myself been at fault many years ago, when much younger, in becoming involved briefly with a political group which made just these errors. But, all this having been acknowledged, it remains a fact that the eagerness of patriots to attain the unattainable – a public image 100% free of any taint of ‘fascist’ or ‘anti-semitic’ connections, justified or not – has become a neurosis which has constantly poisoned and enfeebled nationalist parties, and very often caused them to splinter with the result that the factions into which they have divided have all been totally impotent, with or without the ‘fascist’ label.

Some in the nationalist movement have in fact quite cynically exploited this neurosis in the course of power-struggles where it has been their own ambition, rather than any genuine distaste or fear of ‘fascism’, that has been the driving factor. However, in the case of John Bean I believe that his fears on these counts were always sincere, if misconceived.

Bean’s next serious foray into active politics was with the League of Empire Loyalists, which satisfied his quest for a movement with a ‘non-fascist’ pedigree (though in fact led by a former Mosley lieutenant, A.K. Chesterton). The League never had pretensions to becoming a party but was conceived, and operated, essentially as a movement of protest. Of course, protest groups have their place in the political landscape but always as mere means to an end; there is not the slightest point in their activity unless its object is to bring pressure to bear on those who actually wield the power, so that the latter will carry out the policies for which the protestors clamour. If there is not a hope of this happening, the protest becomes a waste of time – except in special circumstances where it serves a covert purpose of preparing the way for the formation of a political party, with a strategy for the eventual winning of power, at a later date.

There never was the slightest hope of any party of political power (which realistically could only be the Tory Party) adopting the policies that the League advocated. But neither was there any preparedness by the League’s leadership to see the League itself as a party in the making. Its activities, therefore, were leading nowhere. Bean saw this – as also did a younger League member who in the meantime had joined a little while after him. That member’s name was John Tyndall.

I enlisted in the LEL for the same reason as Bean did: because it was the best outlet of its time for people of nationalist opinions who wanted to do something active. We came to the same conclusions about the League’s limited future, largely independently but through some discussion. This discussion eventually led, in 1958, to the formation of the National Labour Party, mainly initiated, and subsequently led, by Bean but with me in a supporting role. As a preliminary to the setting up of the NLP, Bean and Chesterton had exchanged letters on the subject in which the latter had said:–

“I do not feel any deep conviction that the League, unless it has a big break, will get very far, but I do think that you are in danger of abandoning the substance for the shadow. The result could well be years of effort without making the slightest impact on the public mind. The loss of you would be grievous to us, and fragmentation of effort might be annoying, but quite honestly I think that you are going out into the wilderness and that nothing more will be heard of you in any serious political connection.”

Chesterton was at the same time right and wrong. There would indeed be fragmentation of effort, and that is always retrograde when people have previously been working together. The NLP did indeed constitute, to a great extent at least, an abandonment of substance for shadow. The result was to be years of the NLP, and other parties of its type, making at least very little impact on the public mind. The NLP was indeed a step into the wilderness.

But such a step was always inevitable as long as Chesterton remained determined that the LEL remain an organisation of protest and nothing more. There were bound to be others – if not Bean and Tyndall, then someone else – who would take the process a step further and form something intended to channel this protest into a party, aiming, however remotely, at political power. What would have been far preferable to the fragmentation of which Chesterton spoke was an agreement that the League should become a party itself, if only in embryo. After all, had he not admitted that the League was unlikely to get very far? The party that should have been formed then was eventually formed nine years later. They were nine years of much wasted time, including some political misadventures which might well otherwise have been avoided.

‘National Labour’ made some small impact during its two-year career, but it remained very much on the outer fringes of political life in Britain, and largely if not entirely justified Chesterton’s prognosis. In 1960 the NLP amalgamated with another group, the White Defence League, to form the British National Party – which should not be confused with the party of the same name which operates today. Though the NLP brought considerably more members into the merger than did the WDL, it was the head of the latter group, Colin Jordan, who became overall leader of the new combination. This was not unconnected with the fact that Jordan was able to supply a headquarters building as a major bargaining counter. The merger was a positive step forward – a change from the trend of the previous years in that it constituted a move towards greater unity among nationalists instead of greater division. It was also much to Bean’s credit: he sacrificed his position of seniority in the interests of the greater cause – a good example to others which was not always subsequently followed.

But after another two years much of this good was undone. Here I myself must take some of the blame, but so also must Bean. As is usual in political parties, there were different wings: the ‘moderates’ and the ‘militants’. Bean represented the former while Colin Jordan, and I myself in a more junior capacity, were classified as the latter. Had more mature attitudes prevailed, these divisions might have been contained within the party by a spirit of compromise and more readiness for discussion on both sides. As it was, they led to a thoroughly acrimonious split, which occurred in 1962. The consequence of this was that the BNP carried on, now with Bean in charge, while the more ‘militant’ faction reformed as the National Socialist Movement under Jordan.

As Jordan’s main lieutenant, I have taken some ‘stick’ in nationalist circles ever since for this very foolish error. The truth is that I never wanted the reformed party to adopt the name ‘National Socialist’ but went along with the decision once Jordan made it. I blame myself, not Jordan, for my doing so. The fact was that I had had enough of splits. I hadn’t wanted this split in the first place but it was forced by others. I wasn’t prepared to lead people into a further split, but neither did I want to drop out of political activity. In accordance with my view that once the party leader has made a decision it should be followed, irrespective of agreement or otherwise, I went along with Jordan’s scheme for a party under the new name chosen, and subsequently adapted myself to the ‘party line’.

The book under discussion here is John Bean’s, not mine; and this diversion may seem a little like my trying to take centre stage from him. However, as the error involved in the setting up of the NSM, and my participation in it, forms part of a major theme of Many Shades of Black, I have no alternative but to dwell on it a little – with apologies to the author! There will be cause to refer to this subject again.

Naturally, John Bean in his book goes to some lengths to justify his own position in this division, and I certainly do not propose to defend Jordan’s and mine. But more important than the question of where lay the greater blame was the fact that, once again, the nationalist movement had suffered a further fragmentation. Now the movement was splintered into three main strands. There was the League of Empire Loyalists, from which Bean & Co. had split to form the NLP (later the BNP); there was the BNP itself; and now there was the National Socialist Movement – smaller than either but large in the publicity it came to attract. Needless to say, the partisans of each faction strove energetically to explain to everyone why they were right and the others wrong. It was all quite tragic and it was all quite futile. None of these grouplets had any serious political future as they then stood; which was the most ‘right’ of the three was rather academic.

Two years on from these events, I was forced into doing what I had always wanted to avoid doing: I led a split myself. Seeing that the NSM was going nowhere but not being accepted within the other groups, I and probably the main body of party activists parted company with Jordan and set up the Greater Britain Movement. There were now four mutually hostile factions all splashing about in the political wilderness, doomed to total irrelevance. This had to change, and I was one of those who set about changing it.

By a process that has been documented elsewhere, these factions, excluding the NSM, came together in the late 1960s to form the National Front, thus virtually putting an end to the debilitating divisions by which the nationalist movement in Britain had been racked for the past two decades. Again, John Bean was to be commended for consenting to some loss of personal status in order to make this possible.

All this time, JB had been editing and publishing, on a slightly irregular basis, a tabloid-style paper called Combat. The contribution of Combat to the growth of British Nationalism – small though the movement was by comparison with some others of its kind around the world – deserves some praise. For most of his political life Bean had never been a full-time activist; he had usually had to earn his living outside politics – and support a wife and two children into the bargain. When his input of activity, plus his contributions as a publisher and journalist, are taken into account against this background, it can be seen that his sacrifices for the nationalist cause were considerable. In 1968 he suddenly approached me and informed me he was retiring from active politics and volunteered to hand over the subscription list of Combat to my own journal Spearhead, which had been founded just under three years earlier. This gave the latter a considerable boost, and it should not be forgotten.

On the other hand, JB’s withdrawal from the struggle, at 41 years of age, was a matter of deep regret notwithstanding our numerous disagreements. His book, however, does not end at this point, but goes on to cover much of the story of the National Front and comment on developments beyond.

Some painfully slow and frustrating negotiations preceded the setting-up of the NF in 1967. Here we encountered again the neurotic fear of the ‘fascist’ taint on the part of people who simply could not perceive the ‘bigger picture’. The nationalist right in Britain had been impotent for two decades, not primarily because this taint had rubbed off on some of its factions, but because of its woeful disunity. This disunity meant that no single faction was able to command the membership numbers and resources to make the kind of impact upon public opinion that would lead people to think that nationalism was a serious force and therefore worth joining. Until that primary obstacle had been overcome – which could only happen by way of a merger of the factions and the consequent mobilisation of far greater membership numbers and resources – arguments about ‘fascist’ or ‘nazi’ labels and how to deal with them amounted to spitting in the wind.

That the new, unified movement that was required would need to distance itself from ‘fascism’, ‘nazism’ and at least the cruder manifestations of ‘anti-semitism’ referred to previously by Bean – all this was beyond dispute. What bogged down negotiations towards the merger was the small-minded tendency of so many of the key negotiators to reject the idea of entering into any kind of political association with others who in the past had been connected with groups termed ‘fascist’ or ‘nazi’ – though their own previous groups had hardly demonstrated roaring political success by comparison. What was needed was mutual tolerance, compromise and a preparedness to draw a line under past misadventures and failures and look forward to the future. What the new movement had to do was harmonise all the forces of dynamism, activism and, where applicable, leadership available to nationalism from whatever quarter they came. In fact it took a few more years for it to be demonstrated, in the bracing arena of real national politics, that individuals’ associations previous to their involvement with the NF were completely irrelevant to their usefulness to that party; much more important were their personal attributes of energy, talent, dedication and commitment to the common cause.

In his book John Bean takes us on a journey through the often labyrinthine process of these arguments and obstructions which simply postponed what everyone should have seen as wholly necessary and, if nationalism was to become a real force in this country, inevitable. One excerpt from this narrative was instructive. Describing the Acton by-election, in West London, in which Andrew Fountaine, now the NF’s Executive Director, was the candidate and received 1,400 votes, Bean says that seven days before the poll he saw lots of ‘Vote Fountaine’ posters on view and thought the candidate likely to top 5,000 votes, but…

“He then became the victim of a ‘fascist’ smear campaign: first, from an illegal leaflet distributed throughout Acton by the 62 Group [the successor to the former 43 Group – see review of television drama ‘Ridley Road’ in H&D #107 and #108]; second from Liberal and Labour canvassers; third, from a scurrilous leaflet issued by the Liberals on the eve of poll. The Fountaine posters were soon taken down.”

Here there is a confusion between cause and effect based on facile assumptions rather than serious analysis. In the first place, estimates of voting figures, whether drawn from canvassing returns or numbers of posters in windows, almost always greatly exceed results eventually achieved. Then there is the assumption that all those who removed their posters necessarily changed their voting intentions as a result of the same pressures. Much more likely is that they were frightened of getting bricks through their windows!

And even if votes for Fountaine were significantly affected by the smear campaign, this just goes to show that a candidate like AF, with absolutely no past record of association with ‘fascism’, stands just the same chance of having the ‘fascist’ label slapped on him as does another who does have such a record.

And if it be argued that Fountaine would not have earned those smears had he represented a party with no former ‘fascists’ or ‘nazis’ within it, it can only be said that, ‘earn’ or not, he would still have got them! We have all learned through experience that these smearmongers have not the slightest regard for the truth; if ‘fascist’ or ‘nazi’ connections do not exist in the record of a patriotic would-be politician, his opponents will invent them! John Bean ought to understand this, but his description of these events gives little sign of it.

In the final section of his book, Bean looks back on his years as an active nationalist, and pays particular attention to the rise and fall of the National Front, giving six reasons for the latter.

With the first reason one can readily agree. This was the action of the Tories under Margaret Thatcher of stealing the clothing of the NF by implied promises on immigration put forward at the 1979 general election.

As a second reason, the author cites the “almost continual internal warfare that beset the National Front from its foundation…” Here again, he is substantially correct, though he might have said a great deal more in analysis of the causes of that warfare. As an example of an over-facile dismissal of the phenomenon, he takes the example of one-time Leicester Organiser Anthony Reed-Herbert as one of those who were ‘worn down’ by all the in-fighting. I was able to witness closely the events surrounding Reed-Herbert’s defection. In fact, what he did was lead a treacherous and disloyal faction into a breakaway party, based mainly in the Midlands. In my view, establishment infiltration and internal subversion was a far more significant cause of splits than people being ‘worn down’, though the latter factor did play a part in gaining followers for these treacherous elements. Which category Reed-Herbert came into I cannot say.

As reason No. 3, Bean speaks of marches and demonstrations. He begins by saying that such activities have a part to play in politics when they are held for specific reasons and are disciplined – but, he continues, the famous Lewisham march in 1977, which led to a pitched battle mainly between left-wingers and police, was a step too far in this regard.

Well, my recollection of the Lewisham march is that it was very well disciplined and that all the trouble was caused by the opposition. As to whether the march was held for a specific reason, the reason was a protest against mugging, and the area chosen was one in which that practice had attained epidemic proportions. Arguments as to whether Lewisham was “a march too far” have raged up to this day. We come back to the question of a fine tuning aimed at balance between the need for a party to maintain a high public profile and the need for it to avoid a reputation just for brawling. I have said that in this regard we in the NF in those days got the balance nearly right. Unanimity about Lewisham will never be achieved, but at the end of the day we should keep our sense of proportion. One march attended by a riot did not destroy a political movement; other factors were much more important.

John Bean goes on to cite ‘nazi’ smear propaganda as reason No. 4 for the NF’s demise, but then he as good as answers his own claim by acknowledging that other groups of people, such as Kingsley Read’s National Party, who split from the NF to avoid the smears, still went on receiving them. He is of course perfectly right: It is not a question of whether these smears adversely affect nationalist support; probably they do but just how much will never be quantifiable; it is a question of there being no way of avoiding them and therefore of our having to live with them and not fall out over them.

The fifth reason put forward opens up an intriguing debate. Says the author: –

“People interested in joining the NF did so primarily on the issue of immigration. When they wrote in for further details most found that they also had sympathy for some of the other NF views, such as opposition to Britain’s membership of the Common Market; the return of capital punishment for child murderers and the murderers of police officers; denouncing the international bankers who put profit before national interest and jobs. But when they looked through the pages of National Front News and Spearhead they would see other issues that did not appear in the general leaflets and the usually well-written election addresses. These would be articles on Jewish financial power, alleged Jewish control of the media and Zionist influences over British and American foreign policy…”

Well, no-one can please everybody all of the time! But seriously, was the NF to exclude frank discussion of ‘background’ issues which, in the opinion of its leaders, had a very real bearing on the more obvious issues of immigration, Europe and the economy? I believe not. Obviously, the discussion has to be conducted carefully, and we did attempt to do just this. But always there is something liable to said that upsets someone. A party that can completely prevent this belongs to the world of fantasy. At the end of the day, the items in our publications of that time which John Bean evidently thinks should have been excluded did not prevent many thousands joining. As for putting off voters, hardly one voter in a quarter of a million would ever have read such material.

What John Bean seems wholly incapable of realising is that, just as the laws of internal combustion rule that one cannot indefinitely keep a lid on a boiling kettle without it being blown off, once one permits discussion of certain subjects like immigration, Europe and international banking – as must be permitted in the nationalist movement, one could not prevent the extension of that discussion to origins and causes if one tried. My honest opinion on the matter is that, at the end of the day, people ready in the 1970s to join the National Front (or in the 1990s to join the latter-day BNP) are not likely to be put off in any significant numbers from doing so by seeing references to these subjects in publications or, if they were, would be certain to find some other reason for non-participation even if those ones were not available.

John Bean’s final reason (6) for the waning of the NF (and BNP) vote in their traditional areas is ‘White Flight’. Here he is of course partly right, but this would only indicate the need for some changes in campaign locations. Even here, however, the theory, in as much as it applies to the late 1970s and early 1980s, is rather contradicted by the BNP’s excellent results in East London in the early to mid-’90s.

All this, as the reader will by now have concluded, has become something much more than a book review. There is a reason. John Bean’s analysis of the problems besetting British Nationalism during his and later times gets to the heart of the big questions of success and failure, even when his conclusions are, at least in my opinion, off target. There are moments when, in diagnosing failures and setbacks, we are prone to get a little too close to the picture and become immersed in too much minor detail. Here is where there is a need to step back somewhat, transport ourselves mentally to the mountain-top, so to speak, and take more of an overview.

One of the first things we need to recognise is that the kind of country Britain has become in the second half of the 20th century provides one of the most difficult environments in the developed world for the building of a movement of national awakening. National character and temperament, the erosion of education and the prevailing transatlantic ‘pop’ culture, not least the virtual two-party electoral system, all militate against those engaged in such an endeavour. These things do not make the endeavour impossible, but they do necessitate steely determination, almost infinite patience and perseverance, and a calm, adult attitude towards failures and setbacks – making these latter the occasions for deep analysis and serious discussion rather than knee-jerk emotional reactions.

All too often, these conditions have not been properly understood and the rules stemming from them not followed.

The main result, and by far the most damaging one, has been the division of forces. Almost everywhere in the world, patriotic movements engaged in the fight against the liberal-globalist establishment are grossly under-resourced by comparison with their enemies. This makes it imperative for them to combine and coordinate the resources they do have. Wherever these resources are split, impotence is the outcome.

For a few years in the 1970s, patriotic forces in Britain were about 90% united under the National Front. This, combined with other factors outside the range of our discussion here, made for its strength and success. The moment this unity was broken, impotence for many years was the inevitable consequence.

Gradually, a new unity has been forged by way of the rise to dominance of the nationalist movement by the British National Party – though this has not yet proceeded as far as was the case with the NF two decades ago. It is absolutely essential that this unity be maintained, whatever temptations may emerge for it to be undermined and ruptured.

If this is to be achieved, the lessons of the Front’s break-up must be thoroughly digested. Here it avails us nothing to argue interminably about the responsibility to be apportioned to this or that individual; rather should we be concentrating on particular tendencies of thought and action which were ultimately destructive.

One has been pinpointed, if only by implication: the failure to understand the immensely difficult terrain on which we fight, and thence the need for an acceptance of very patient timescales for the achievement of success.

There was another which cannot be stressed too strongly. This was the unwillingness of people representing certain strands of nationalist thinking to understand and tolerate others representing different, but not necessarily incompatible, strands. Here the ghosts of the past were all too often allowed to haunt and plague the present.

The previous era in which nationalist forces enjoyed power in major countries and prevailed over a substantial part of Europe was the nazi and fascist era of the 1930s and 1940s. The shadow of that era – even if it is merely a negative one – cannot be eradicated, however much we try.

An adult approach to the problems of today and tomorrow must first be based on a recognition that times are different, that history has moved on and that methods that might have been appropriate to deal with problems of the pre-war and wartime period in parts of Europe are not necessarily suitable to the present, also that this previous era carries a popular stigma that requires a firm distancing on our part from its imagery and associations.

But equally, such an adult approach must recognise that there will be individuals comprising a not negligible part of the patriotic and radical right of today who will refuse to see no good at all in those revolutionary experiments of yesterday, however unhappily they may have ended. The idea that such individuals can be totally excommunicated from our modern movement and all the strands of their thinking rejected as if they constituted some latter-day bubonic plague – that is not only in principle wrong but it is also wildly unrealistic. Failure to recognise this truth in the 1970s was a major generator of quarreling and division. It must not be allowed to have the same consequences in the future.

Taking this question a stage further, we have to understand that, whatever distance is established between modern nationalism and former national socialism and fascism, the nazi and fascist labels are going to be slapped on us by our opponents in the media and in other political parties, particularly those of the left. There just is no way to avoid these labels without abandoning altogether every robust principle of race and nation and becoming little better than flag-waving Tories. What we have to do is rid ourselves of that particular neurosis brought on by constant worrying and fretting over the matter and the resultant quarrelling and splitting into which this so often degenerates.

There is one further factor which contributed with immense destructive power to the disasters of the 1970s, and in particular to the eventual fragmentation and demise of the National Front, and John Bean’s failure to mention this in his book might be regarded as a serious omission but, possibly, for the mitigation of limited space in a work of 252 pages.

In every damaging division in nationalist parties that I have witnessed over the years, there has been abundant evidence, if only circumstantial, of enemy intervention – whether one wishes to put this down to government and its political policing agencies of Special Branch and MI5, the Tories, the Left, Zionists or any combination of these. The infiltration of patriotic movements by hostile agents is a worldwide phenomenon and by no means a new one. It has a number of purposes, of which the most obvious is the gathering of information – particularly on activities which might extend into realms of illegality. There is also the trick of incitement of less mature members to actions which, if not illegal, cause political embarrassment and loss of support. But by far the most devastating function of the infiltrator is the promotion of internal discord and division, preferably (from his paymasters’ standpoint) leading to outright splits. This is accomplished by exploiting natural tensions that are going to exist in any political organisation: personal feuds and rivalries; arguments over ideology and tactics; frustration over electoral setbacks or slow growth and progress.

There is no certain way of immunising a nationalist party against the enemy infiltrator. Total vetting is out of the question with the small resources of internal security that are usually available. Trained instinct in the way of character judgement is a useful aid, but it is never infallible. By far the most important and effective defence is to do everything possible to render the infiltrator relatively powerless by ensuring that his most destructive strategy – the sowing if internal conflict and splintering – does not succeed. Even this cannot always be accomplished to perfection, given the human factor that is always present; but awareness of the danger, and vigilance against it, can go a long way.

In Many Shades of Black John Bean has done nationalists in Britain a favour by inducing us to look at our problems and ask ourselves some necessary questions. It is my opinion that he has not by any means supplied all the correct answers. Nevertheless, his analysis does have the virtue that, in the context of present disputes at least, it comes from one who has no axes to grind. This apart, the book seldom fails to entertain. At the end of this counter-analysis which has gone far beyond the length normal to such an exercise, I recommend it!

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.

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).