John Wright 1954-2023
I received an email this morning from H&D‘s lawyer: “Mark – Some sad news: our friend John Wright died on Thursday 21st December. He suffered a fall at his flat followed, it seems, by a major brain haemorrhage. John was in any event suffering from advanced dementia and had little recollection of his own life’s history or present circumstances, the second of which was a blessing in some ways.”
John Wright was 69 years old, and died in his native South London, where he had lived all his life. A true Londoner, and one of the few White British Londoners left in that part of the capital today.
Born in Brixton, Lambeth, in 1954 to an English mother and Northern Irish father, John moved to the neighbouring borough Southwark, after the rest of his family moved up to the Northeast of England in the 1970s.
For a good chunk of his adult working life, John worked for the Daily Telegraph newspaper in their advertising department (where he picked up the nickname Bristow, after the cartoon character, who some claimed he resembled!). First, he worked at the Telegraph‘s Fleet Street offices, and then moved over to their new offices at Docklands, Canary Wharf, in 1987 (where I visited him a couple of times).
Always interested in politics, John joined the National Front in June 1979, after watching their TV General Election broadcast the previous month. The TV broadcast (as well as election leaflets) brought the NF over 10,000 enquiries, of which it is estimated that 200-300 joined.
However, those were not good days for the NF, and they encountered a number of splits in the coming year, with the party breaking up into three or four different factions. John stayed loyal to the official NF, at the time led by their Chairman Andrew Brons with Richard Verrall as his deputy. However, the party was really run by the NF’s national activities organiser Martin Webster, from their Great Eastern Street HQ at Excalibur House, in Tower Hamlets – London’s East End.
John stood as an NF candidate a number of times at both local and national level, including one of the famous four GLC by-elections in 1984, where he contested Lewisham West, polling 266 votes (1.7%). He also helped in many other elections when he was not a candidate himself, including the infamous Vauxhall by-election of 1988, when there were two NF candidates! John supported the Flag NF candidate Ted Budden, and personally addressed thousands of envelopes for Ted’s election address.
John was very interested in community politics (which we have covered in recent issues of H&D) and he (with a handful of other activists) build up one the NF’s most successful paper rounds in Lambeth in the early-mid 1980s, where he and others sold NF News and Nationalism Today door to door to White people in Lambeth branch’s target wards.
When the NF Cadre/Flag split in 1985/86 happened, John like most of the activists in Lambeth Branch did not support either side, he just walked away. Their local organiser Mick Turner, who had backed the Griffin/Harrington faction, was left with very few members and almost no activists. The NF as we knew it then was dead, never really to recover again.
However, John stayed interested in nationalism and although not a member of any party kept up with all the happenings on the nationalist scene. I first met him in 1985 when he travelled down to Devon to attend the wedding of another former Lambeth branch member Mark Spong who had moved to Plymouth a few years earlier to attend Plymouth Poly – now that’s another story for another day…
John, along with Dave Moon (who sadly died a few years ago) and his long-standing friend Ray Heath stayed in Torquay (where I was living at the time) over the weekend of the wedding, and we all met up for the first time then, on Mark’s stag night. It was a proper stag night in those days – held the day before the wedding, not like the stag dos of day which are held a week or so earlier!
The wedding, which was held the next day in Plymouth, brought together many nationalists from the London area, including H&D‘s future lawyer. And as they say, we all kept in touch from that day onwards. All due to Mark Spong getting married in Devon!
With the bulk of the nationalist movement (outside the BNP) on its knees by the early 1990s, John was one of the original ten founders of Right NOW! magazine, along with me. We built the magazine up from scratch until it had a subscription base of over a thousand and a circulation of over 2,000. Sadly, Derrick Turner decided to close the magazine down in 2006 – which John (and I) thought was a big mistake – but there you go.
Throughout the mid to late 1980s and early to mid-1990s, I kept in touch with John, and stayed over at his flat in the Elephant and Castle, just off the Old Kent Road in South London, dozens of times, when I was up in London, for NF or Right NOW! events, and when my football team Wolves played in London.
John was a massive Millwall FC supporter, and would attend most “Wall” home games at their ground, The Den. He would stand on the Dock Side, AKA the “Halfway Line”, come rain or shine. I attended a couple of matches with him at The Den, against my team Wolves, but also an end of season thriller against Newcastle United in 1993, who were managed at the time by Kevin Keegan. There must have been at least 10,000 Geordies at The Den that day. The game was a sell-out, and the atmosphere was electric!
John also came down to Devon from time to time where he used to stay at his friend Ray’s house in Abottskerswell, just outside of Torquay. We always used to met up for a few beers and a meal when he was in the area.
In my final week before I moved over to live in the States in July 1995, we had a farewell drink at the famous Orange Brewery Pub (which was once frequented by GK Chesterton no less!) in Victoria, in central London. In fact, the Orange Brewery was always one of our regular drinking spots when I visited London.
Normally after a Saturday night’s drinking, we would all end up at the Pimlico Tandoori, one of the area’s finest Indian restaurants. John was a creature of habit and would normally have the Butter Chicken, with pilau rice, onion bhajis and a keema naan bread.
On the Sunday lunchtime, after a full English breakfast in the morning, we would head over to the Surprise Pub, near “Little Portugal”, just north of Brixton, where we would meet up with Ray for an afternoon session, before returning to John’s flat at the Elephant and Castle for a Sunday roast. I remember everything on the plate was laid out neatly, not a pea out of place! Good days – and good meals!
John came over and visited me in the States in 1998, when I lived in Vienna, Northern Virginia (just outside Washington DC). I can remember the expression on his face when he landed at Washington Dulles Airport, after an eight-hour flight from London Heathrow. He was in desperate need of a fag (cigarette), after being denied a smoke during the Atlantic crossing, and the first thing he did when we got out of the airport was “light one up”.
During that holiday, we flew down to Daytona Beach, on Florida’s east coast, where he hired a car and we drove down the coast to New Smyrna Beach (where we stayed in a beach front condo for a few days, kindly lent to us by the former Council of Conservative Citizens leader Gordon Baum). We were joined there by Kristin Duke (David’s younger daughter) and her half-brother Derek Black (Don Black’s son). That sure was an interesting few days to say the least!
John did not realise how hot Florida would be in August and did not really bring any suitable clothes! So, Kristin took him out to the local mall and kitted him out in some shorts and T-shirts, clothing more suitable for Florida’s tropical climate.
I remember while we were there the Yanks launched a rocket into space from Cape Canaveral – an hour south down that east coast. We drove out of town, and with thousands of others watched it go into outer space. Some sight, I can tell you.
When that holiday was over, we drove north back up to Daytona Beach, where we returned the hire car, and met up with Don Black who drove us up to Charleston, South Carolina, where the CofCC was having their biennial convention. We stayed there for the weekend, and after the convention was over, we drove back to Northern Virginia with Zack (who at the time ran the CofCC’s youth section and lived very close to me in northern VA).
When my mother died in February 2002, I flew back to England for the funeral with Kristin Duke. We landed at Heathrow early morning, then made our way to Paddington. John kindly took time off to meet us there and show Kristin around all the tourist sites in the capital that Yanks love: Buckingham Palace, Big Ben, Tower of London, etc. Before ending up at a traditional London pub for lunch. John also met us back in London, a few days later in Millbank, near the River Thames, just before we flew back to the States, for a farewell drink with all the usual suspects.
In later years, John would go over to Benidorm in Spain with his good friend Dave Moon, also a former Lambeth NF activist, for a few weeks in the sunshine every now and then. He would also do the Dover to Calais “booze and fag” run every few months, so he could stock up on tobacco, beer, spirits and his beloved bars of chocolate!
The last time I saw John, was at an H&D subscribers’ meet-up at the historic Royal Oak pub in South London, maybe six or seven years ago. He was on fine form that day, but sadly not long after that he would start going downhill.
I will miss John, he was a good guy, one of those in the movement who normally did not have a bad word to say about anybody. He was a creature of habit and just got on with his life and did almost the same things and went to almost the same places every week – but that was his way, and what he enjoyed. He was a nationalist until the end.
Mark Cotterill, Editor – Heritage and Destiny
Videos from 2023 H&D Meeting now online
Despite many loud threats from the ultra-left and their financial backers, the 2023 H&D meeting went ahead unimpeded, at a hotel in the Lancashire countryside, just outside Preston.
We are have now uploaded videos from this event, courtesy of our media team who put in many hours of hard work on the day and during the following week.
Laura Towler, from Patriotic Alternative, paid tribute to the political legacy of Sir Oswald Mosley, one of the four men honoured at this year’s meeting, 75 years after the foundation of Mosley’s postwar Union Movement. Some of us at H&D knew veteran Mosleyites, and we are certain that they (and especially Lady Mosley) would have been very happy to know that Laura, her husband Sam, and the PA team are advancing the patriotic cause in 2023!
PA’s founder and leader Mark Collett gave the penultimate speech (which for technical reasons is only available in audio).
Mark spoke about his years in the BNP during the first decade of the millennium. As older viewers will remember, he was one of the most effective and hardworking BNP officers of that era, but his work and that of many other sincere patriots came to nothing, due to the corruption and incompetence of BNP leader Nick Griffin. In this frank and cogent analysis, Mark describes what was good about the BNP, and what went so badly wrong.
Professor John Kersey, Vice-President of the Traditional Britain Group, addressed the broken state of British politics and society, and emphasised that “musical freedom comes the moment you say it isn’t about the money or the fame, or about what anyone, powerful or not, thinks of it. It’s about the need to engage with our culture and community, to create, to communicate and to inspire. The reward isn’t money or fame. The reward is doing it and making your audience feel that you have connected with them in a way that nothing else can.”
‘Anti-fascist’ hysteria during the two weeks since the meeting has focused on our European correspondent, Isabel Peralta, who spoke of her conviction that political faith, loyalty, honour and fanaticism can move mountains.
Isabel called on racial nationalists to show the spirit of Leonidas and his 300 Spartans defending Europe at Thermopylae, and of the national socialist martyrs who fell in Munich in 1923, almost a decade before the triumph of their cause.
The true European spirit is alive in our hearts and will triumph: those H&D readers and European nationalists lucky enough to know Isabel Peralta will never doubt it.
The closing speech was given by H&D’s assistant editor Peter Rushton, who also writes the Real History blog. Peter explains who the real “terrorists” are, and exposes their connections to the same establishment and ‘antifa’ organisations that sought to impede this year’s meeting; the same sinister forces that pulled the strings behind UK border security to harass fellow speaker Isabel Peralta.
Paying tribute to the four men honoured at this year’s event – Derek Beackon, Andrew Brons, Sir Oswald Mosley, and Ian Stuart – Peter emphasised that our enemies’ fear is a sign that the flame of European nationalism burns brightly in 2023. As Sir Oswald Mosley told his followers: “Together in Britain we have lit a flame that the ages shall not extinguish. Guard that sacred flame, my brother Blackshirts, until it illumines Britain and lights again the path of mankind.”
Dr Jim Lewthwaite, retired archaeology lecturer, Orangeman, and chairman of the British Democrats, based his speech around an analysis of Professor Nigel Biggar’s new book Colonialism: A Moral Reckoning – which was reviewed in Issue 115 of H&D.
Jim talked about the positive side of the British Empire, as well as slavery and how the British were the first of the major powers of the time to ban it. The British Democrats are now beginning to attract significant numbers of experienced activists as well as those new to electoral politics. Despite disappointing council election results earlier this year, they are presently the main electoral force on the British nationalist scene. And unlike the tragic rump of the BNP (which lives off legacies and does no serious political work), the Brit Dems do not pay any staff. All their funds are spent on building the movement and spreading information about the present crisis of our nation.
Stephen Frost, National Secretary of British Movement, acknowledged that our movement of resistance to multicultural decay is a ‘broad church’ of patriots, not all of whom by any means are national socialists (as represented by BM and Colin Jordan’s earlier organisations). Yet as he emphasised, BM has always been prepared to lend its support to sincere comrades from other groups and parties – at demonstrations, election campaigns and at meetings such as this one.
Steve added that the task of all nationalists is to spread propaganda for our cause by any and every means and format: whether old-school with hard copy leaflets and newspapers or by more modern means using the internet including social media. The propaganda war is bringing increasing numbers to realisation of the essential truth of our values. Stephen Frost and BM have utilised these propaganda methods, via such means as the ‘Under the Sunwheel’ podcast. Colin Jordan’s political legacy continues to inspire new generations of activists.
Stephen Frost’s co-host at ‘Under the Sunwheel’, Benny Bullman, lead singer of the Rock Against Communism band Whitelaw, spoke in tribute to Ian Stuart, founder of Blood & Honour and lead singer of Skrewdriver, who tragically died 30 years ago this month.
Benny pointed out that Ian Stuart’s dedication to race and nation led him to turn his back on a lucrative career in ‘mainstream’ music (an industry controlled by the usual suspects). Ian achieved far more than the wealth and fame that was accrued by some of his contemporaries after they sold out. The legacy of Ian Stuart and Skrewdriver continues to inspire new generations of patriots throughout the White world.
Due to a slight technical problem with sound at the end of the video (now resolved) our US correspondent Ken Schmidt’s speech to the conference has only just been posted online.
Ken has been an activist and writer in the American nationalist movement since the 1980s. He writes a regular column in H&D entitled “From the other side of the Pond”. He is a member of the League of the South, although he is now living back in the north – in New Jersey.
He spoke firstly about Donald Trump and the US presidential election and then about how the USA as a country is breaking up due to multi-racialism/multi-culturalism. And then about the various movements who support secession and the break-up of the USA as the only long-term solution if White people are to have any future in North America.
Dr Rolf Kosiek (1934-2023)
One of the leading intellectuals in European nationalism – the German scientist, historian and political activist Dr Rolf Kosiek – has died aged 88.
His initial studies at the universities of Göttingen and Heidelberg were in physics, chemistry and history, and he obtained his doctorate in nuclear physics at Heidelberg in 1963. He was a research assistant at Heidelberg University, and taught at the Nürtingen University of Applied Sciences until his dismissal for political reasons in 1980.
Dr Kosiek was an active NPD member from the mid-1960s and represented his party in the Landtag (regional parliament) of Baden-Württemberg from 1968-72, as well as serving as a local councillor from 1968-73. During the 1970s he was a member of the NPD’s federal executive.
After his politically-motivated dismissal from his academic post, Dr Kosiek worked for the rest of his life with the German nationalist publishers Grabert-Verlag. He wrote regular articles (under the pen name Rudolf Künast) for the revisionist journal Deutschland in Geschichte und Gegenwart, and also wrote for another very high quality journal, Nation und Europa.
Dr Kosiek was perhaps best known among German nationalist intellectuals as editor (with fellow NPD activist and historian Dr Olaf Rose) of the five-volume German historical encyclopedia, Der Große Wendig. Richtigstellungen zur Zeitgeschichte (‘Corrections to Contemporary History’).
Another of his most important works was a study of the subversive Frankfurt School, published in 2001 (Die Frankfurter Schule und ihre zersetzenden Auswirkungen).
H&D is grateful to comrades at Devenir Europeo for informing us of Dr Kosiek’s death. European nationalists at the intellectual vanguard of our struggle will mourn his loss but continue to be inspired by his example and legacy.
Politicised policing in the UK
Home Secretary Suella Braverman – who was being applauded by some racial nationalists only a week ago after a speech about immigration – has wasted no time in seeking to politicise the response of UK police officers to the developing war in Palestine.
Braverman is the daughter of Indian immigrants who moved to Britain during the 1960s. She is married to a Jewish businessman, Rael Braverman.
And she has obvious ambitions to succeed her fellow Indian Rishi Sunak as the UK’s Prime Minister.
Today Braverman abandoned any pretence that her party is interested in a just and lasting Middle East peace settlement.
Writing to Chief Constables across England and Wales, Braverman reminded them that support for Hamas is a criminal offence under the Terrorism Act, which means that even wearing certain symbols can lead to a jail sentence in the UK. (See Saturday’s H&D article written within hours of Hamas breaching Israeli security.)
But she went further. In a blatant attempt to silence political debate, Braverman now seeks to criminalise one of the slogans most widely heard on pro-Palestinian demonstrations. She told Chief Constables:
“It is not just explicit pro-Hamas symbols and chants that are cause for concern. I would encourage police to consider whether chants such as ‘From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free’ should be understood as an expression of a violent desire to see Israel erased from the world, and whether its use in certain contexts may amount to a racially aggravated section 5 public order offence.”
Braverman even suggests that displaying a Palestinian flag at a demonstration should in some circumstances be regarded as a criminal offence.
Perhaps most significantly, the Home Secretary used this letter to suggest to Chief Constables that (for the first time in the UK) possession of a swastika symbol should be treated as a criminal offence, in the context of a pro-Palestinian demonstration.
In most cases, H&D readers would probably deprecate the use of swastikas at such events, as they are almost always used by leftwing anti-Zionists in the context of suggesting an equivalence between National Socialism and Zionism. Nevertheless, the Home Secretary’s suggestion – that simple possession of a swastika symbol should be a criminal offence – is a dangerous development and one which should be resisted by all legal means.
Our readers will not be surprised to see that Braverman highlighted the “close collaboration” between English and Welsh police forces and the ultra-Zionist lobby group Community Security Trust (CST).
CST grew out of the violent anti-fascist 62 Group which specialised in physical attacks on British nationalists during the 1960s. CST’s founder Gerald Ronson was in charge of finances for the 62 Group, working alongside its “field commander” Cyril Paskin and its intelligence chief Gerry Gable, who is now the editor and publisher of Searchlight. Gable and two other 62 Group operatives were convicted for an illegal entry into the home of historian David Irving, where they aimed to steal documents.
Paskin, Ronson, and Gable planned many acts of political thuggery. One of the last 62 Group operations was in November 1971, when the 62 Group attacked a conference in a Brighton Hotel organised by the Northern League, an academic racial nationalist group. Paskin and others received suspended prison sentences for affray.
Some years earlier, Gerald Ronson was convicted of a politically motivated assault on a member of Sir Oswald Mosley’s Union Movement.
During the mid-1960s, the 62 Group evolved into a more politically focused group called JACOB, which in turn evolved into CST. The development of JACOB was advised by Monica Medicks, an Israeli intelligence officer who had previously been a member of the anti-British terrorist group Irgun.
Unlike Suella Braverman and the Conservative Party, Heritage and Destiny supports the interests of Britons and Europeans rather than Israelis.
European nationalists have different views on the Middle East. But our movements – and future nationalist governments in Europe – will act in the interests of Europeans and will never prostrate ourselves as the uncritical tools of international Zionist lobbies. Especially not lobbies with a long record of anti-European, anti-nationalist violence.
Both Braverman and her political opponent Jeremy Corbyn are playing games with the issues of “racism” and “anti-semitism”. Corbyn persistently lies about the historical events of Cable Street in 1936 (where Jews and Communists fought London police in an effort to obstruct a march by Mosley’s supporters), and as we recently reported, he took the extraordinary step of writing to Braverman to pressure the Home Secretary into banning our European correspondent Isabel Peralta from entering the UK.
And now we see Braverman herself seeking to criminalise anti-Zionism and extend the UK’s criminal law into other areas of previously legitimate political debate.
H&D will of course try to stay within the law at all times. But Braverman is playing a dangerous game: her present trajectory is likely to force a confrontation in which not only British nationalists, but people of various political persuasions critical of Israel are dragged into court. If this happens, she can expect to be fought at every level, from the streets of Britain to the European Courts.
Ian Stuart Donaldson: 1957-1993. 30 years since the death of a legend
Ian Stuart Donaldson was the lead singer of the most famous White nationalist band of all time – Skrewdriver – a gifted musician, and dedicated movement activist.
In the NF he was known as Ian Stuart, a large Lancashire lad from Blackpool. He had that ‘something’ charisma about him that made him stand out from the crowd. It is very hard to believe that it is now thirty years since he died in that fateful car-crash in Derbyshire on 24th September, 1993.
Ian was born on 11th August, 1957 in the seaside town of Blackpool. His father was an engineer who ran his own toolmaker’s business and his mother was an old-fashioned northern house-wife. He went to Baines Grammar school in Poulton-le-Fylde – which is less than twenty miles from H&D’s Preston office – and was pretty wild as a teenager by all accounts!
On leaving school with a couple of O-Levels Ian did various jobs including apprenticeships, but his heart was really set on a career in music. The first band he joined was Tumbling Dice in 1976, but that soon broke up and Ian formed another and started sending out tapes to record companies. Their luck was in and Chiswick Records asked them to come to London and record a session in their studio. The band not even having a name chose Skrewdriver from a list supplied by Chiswick!
Ian and his band packed their bags, moved to London and around this time adopted the full Skinhead image. They played concerts supporting Motorhead and The Police among many others and began to build a name and a following. At that time Graham McPherson (Suggs), later the lead singer with Madness, was one of their roadies.
After the release of the band’s first album All Skrewed Up there was a showdown with both their management and record company who wanted Skrewdriver to denounce their nationalist, mainly skinhead following and change their image following pressure from the left-wing music press in general and New Musical Express in particular.
They refused to do this, so Chiswick cancelled their contract. Now, for the first time Ian began really to think politically and joined the National Front. Soon after the idea for Rock Against Communism began to take shape and the White Power EP was released. An ‘underground hit’ from the beginning, this poor sound quality first effort was to lead to a White youth revolution in the late 1970s that continues to this day.
Ian Stuart’s music is of a ‘love it or hate it’ variety and like all artistic performances is a matter of subjective individual taste. Ian understood this and combined his political beliefs with a great depth of musical knowledge and variety. So not only did he record as lead singer of Skrewdriver, and in doing so almost single-handedly create a new brand of music which we now know as White Power Rock, he recorded as The Klansmen, which was a combination of Bluegrass Country and Rockabilly; as White Diamond, for heavy metal fans; and with Stigger (Steve Calladine) singing a combination of traditional ballads such as the Green Fields of France and his own compositions such as Suddenly. This is of course, just the merest sketch of Ian Stuart’s life and activities.
Politically Ian was first active in the NF’s Blackpool branch in the late 1970s, before moving to London, where he joined Central London branch. He soon became the branch organiser, winning the NF’s branch recruitment cup two years in a row. In 1987 he resigned from the NF for political and financial reasons and formed a new nationalist organisation called Blood and Honour (commonly known as B&H or “28”).
After almost ten years of living in the last White-run hotel in King’s Cross, London, and after serving a prison sentence for defending himself, Ian gave up on our capital city and moved to Derbyshire at the end of the 1980s. From there he organised concerts, ran B&H and published his magazine of the same name.
The day after that fatal car-crash, in which his good friend Stephen Flint (Boo) was killed, Ian too died of his wounds in hospital. He was only 36 years old and yet left a lifetime of great recordings behind him. Ian Stuart is a movement legend, he will go down in nationalist folklore. Even though he is no longer with us, his music will live on forever.
THE LADDER TO POWER – THE ONLY NATIONALIST STRATEGY THAT HAS EVER WORKED IN BRITAIN
Introduction – the View from Today:
The “Ladder Strategy”, a practical blueprint for how the Nationalist Movement could advance to its ultimate objective of national government, evolved on the ground in the 1960s and ’70s in branches of the John Bean iteration of the British National Party and the mid-1970s National Party breakaway from the National Front.
It was first articulated in a coherent form, as expounded here, by leading 1970s and ‘80s Nationalist activist Steve Brady, who had himself been involved in its implementation by the Blackburn and Lewisham and Southwark Branches of the National Party in the mid-’70s. An implementation rewarded by the unprecedented election of two Nationalist councillors in Blackburn in May 1976 and a 26% vote in a council election in Deptford, South London, for the NP later that year. In the latter case, the National Front, despite being much bigger and better known, but wedded to a strategy aimed at winning national media publicity rather than the NP alternative sinking local roots and sustained campaigning in the community, was easily beaten by the NP, gaining only 18%. Had the NF stood aside in the wider interests of the Movement, the combined vote would have seen the NP candidate elected.
Steve shared his experiences, and the strategy they embodied, at NF political training weekends at Liss House, in rural Hampshire, in the early 1980s. Young activists trained at these camps went on to apply the strategy in the latest iteration of the BNP in the 1990s and 2000s, with resounding success, culminating in the election of over fifty councillors across the country, including four at County Council level, and two Members of the European Parliament.
Meanwhile, Steve Brady, by now a member of the National Directorate of the Flag section of the National Front after Nick Griffin split the party in early 1986, documented the strategy in these two articles published in the Flag NF ideological magazine Vanguard in late 1987.
In the first article, Steve explains why the previous Nationalist strategy of trying to win support and grow itself by attracting national media publicity through marches and demonstrations was fatally flawed, because the national media “central nexus” is irreconcilably hostile to our Movement and, understandably from its point of view, refused to allow itself to be used in this way. So the coverage thus obtained in TV and newspapers, what would now be termed the Mainstream Media, MSM, was relentlessly hostile and negative. As Steve once put it, we were “giving our worst enemy a vital message to give to our best friends”. Therefore this strategy had failed and, he argued and events were to prove, would continue to fail.
Instead he argued that we should communicate with our target audience, the White British public, directly and in person, via the so called local nexus, via knocking on their doors and campaigning on local issues in their communities, aided by carefully produced national and local printed media, a Party newspaper and local leaflets and newsletters. In the second of his articles, Steve explained that this would build the first, foundation, rung on the Ladder to Power. Which in turn would enable the building of the second, and so on.
That ladder was based on the simple idea that if, as the Movement does, you face a high barrier, a political wall, keeping you from your target, national power, you do not persist with futile attempts to jump it in one leap, hoping, inevitably in vain, for a boost over from a hostile MSM. Instead you build a ladder, where constructing each rung of itself endows you with the resources in terms of membership and public support to aspire realistically to build the next rung, and so on all the way to Government.
This was scoffed at by our enemies at the time, given that the Movement then struggled to achieve even the lowest rung anywhere, despite earlier success, rendered ineffectual by the factionalism, disunity and selfish egotism that have been the persisting bane of our Movement. However, when seriously implemented, locally in Tower Hamlets in the early 1990s and then nationally from 2000 on, the strategy demonstrably worked. By 2010, with dozens of Nationalist councillors and two MEPs, our enemies were not laughing at all. Under better and broader leadership, the BNP would by then have been poised realistically to hope to attain its first national MPs by the 2015 General Election. Instead Nick Griffin destroyed his second Nationalist party.
But the strategy here reproduced is still valid and would still work. Even on a local scale with a tiny organisation, H&D Editor Mark Cotterill was able to use it to win election to Blackburn council, so even small, local groups can, and should, start to climb the ladder now. This actually probably shows that even the credit Steve gave to using the Central Nexus to get the organisation’s name across to the public is misplaced – the public at large had never heard of Mark’s party from the central nexus, but using the local nexus effectively won him the seat anyway. Future movements may well be able to ignore the central nexus, the MSM, pretty much, as long as they use the local nexus and follow the Ladder Strategy based on it. Unlike any alternatives put forward and in some cases tried again and again for the best part of a century, it actually works.
Therefore we reproduce it here, unedited. It does show its age and its origin, but we believe that in no way undermines its essential validity and usefulness.
However, obviously given the articles are nearly 40 years old, and written by a senior member of his particular Nationalist group, the details are occasionally dated and slanted to boost the author’s faction at the time and reflect its own particular ideological position on some issues, a position not necessarily required for the strategy described to work. The resources of the Flag NF in late 1987 are, notably, not understated! Although it is true, for example, that the group’s Birmingham Branch did begin to implement the Ladder Strategy, their organisation collapsed before they got very far with it.
It collapsed because, as the author himself later admitted, whilst it was true, and probably still is, that most of the British public are sympathetic to a broad British Nationalist programme of social conservatism, economic radicalism, and maintaining the essential ethnic identity of our homeland, by 1987 few of that public would have taken the National Front seriously as a potential vehicle for such a programme.
Its earlier futile national media/central nexus-oriented strategy, leading to a self-defeating reliance on marches which our opponents were able to make ever more violent, repelling much of the public, had already discredited it beyond repair.
In hindsight, the NF should have switched from a central nexus strategy to and exclusively local nexus oriented one after its last march not portrayed as “NF MARCH SPARKS RIOT”, Red Lion Square in June 1974. Our opponents discovered then, and know now, that violent opposition to our, originally peaceful, demos is used by the MSM to blame us for the violence and put people off. This may not be true, however, for local community protests, e.g. against “asylum seeker” hostels, where our opponents will be dealt with by the local community.
However the NF had persisted with a central nexus strategy based on marches long after its political sell-by date and had become linked in the public mind with the skinheads and football hooligans who were needed to make the marches physically viable, and whose presence the MSM central nexus was delighted to publicise. After they had seen off the Griffin faction, most of the Flag leadership realised the NF had poisoned its own PR water by 1992, and walked away. It is possible that, if they had persisted long enough in a community/local nexus communication strategy, they might have detoxified their brand directly with the public, eventually. We will never know.
More notably, this was all written many years before the rise of the Internet and social media. However, I am sure the author of said articles would argue that this new technology is less of a radical alternative way of taking our message to the public than it seems, being essentially more a part of the old central nexus than the local one or some new nexus connecting us and the public..
It is true that unlike when using the MSM itself, Nationalists can control the content of their own messages on these media. This is certainly most useful, especially, it could be argued, for communicating ideological and political education to other Nationalists rather than the general public. Nonetheless as far as taking our message to the public goes it lacks the direct personal contact with Nationalists which is the key strength of the local nexus approach in overcoming MSM smear propaganda.
Also, and most importantly, a communications strategy based on the Internet and social media is fatally vulnerable to the fact that this medium, like the old TV/newspaper MSM central nexus, is totally and absolutely controlled by our irreconcilable enemies, Zuckerberg and his ilk, who can, often have and always if we look like getting anywhere using those media will, simply pull the plug and shut us down. They still control the medium and can silence the message.
This is not true of, and only of, the local nexus on which, and only on which the Ladder Strategy is based. That Strategy can proceed perfectly well in the face of unrelented MSM bile and the total exclusion of Nationalists from the Internet and social media, which may well happen. “New Technology”, while certainly worth using while we still can, is not a quick fix or an easy way around the enemy control of our media.
There is no substitute for the hard graft of talking to our people direct themselves, campaigning on issues which of themselves may be of little direct relevance to our Nationalist ideology but which matter to the communities involved, and building, step by step, the ladder which will, as trying it has shown, bring us ultimately to power, and thus save our Race and Nation. There is no other, easier way or simple short-cut to do that. Here is the way to win that we know works.
Click here to read The Road to Power, Part 1 (first published in Vanguard, October 1987).
THE ROAD TO POWER 2 – THE LADDER STRATEGY
In the first article in this series, I outlined the broad strategic direction in which the National Front is pointing – towards the “local information nexus”, towards direct contact with the people, and away from the “central nexus”, the mass media, as a means of putting across our message. Now I want to get down to brass tacks, and outline the first steps each Branch must take on the long road to victory.
The first step is to select a “target ward”, the ward in which the NF will build its first mass support base in each area. These wards should be selected for, obviously, good NF potential, where our policies on e.g. immigration, unemployment or whatever will be seen as directly relevant to the local people, but where the situation, especially the racial one, is not so hopeless in the foreseeable future that local Whites have despaired, fled, or stayed because they like the way things are now.
They should also be surrounded by other wards in the same Parliamentary constituency which are mostly, if not as good as the selected target ward, at least of reasonable potential. For ultimately the constituency will itself be targeted. Finally, obviously, the target ward should be reasonably accessible to local Branch activists.
The next step is to survey the target ward in depth. This is done in two sweeps. Sweep one consists of activists, over a period of weeks, knocking on every door in the ward selling NF literature. To make this easier, The Flag in particular has been carefully designed to appeal to ordinary people who may never have seen an NF publication before.
On a copy of the electoral roll for the ward, each house’s response is noted. Sympathisers will form the basis of a permanent monthly paper round, and will be invited to buy extra Flags etc. to pass on to their friends; eventually some will be politically educated and recruited. “Don’t knows” will be leafletted and intermittently visited again. Hostiles will also be noted and ignored/avoided in future..
Sweep two, at more or less the same time but with different personnel (especially older or more reticent activists) will also go through the ward, not identifying themselves as NF but conducting an “opinion poll”, aimed at identifying the main local issues in the ward, for later local propaganda targeting. Birmingham Branch, who have successfully done this, will be pleased to explain the details to other Branches.
POTENTIAL RECRUITS
In the succeeding months, some activists simply service the existing doorstep paper buyers every month (here again, the older or more reticent come into their own.) These potential recruits should gradually be introduced to more in-depth Party literature, so that by the time they are ready to join the Party, if they ever are, they will understand at least basic ideology. Again, in the NF Statement of Policy and 100 Questions and Answers, the Party national centre has provided the Branches with the resource they need.
Meanwhile, the Branch begins production of a regular ward leaflet, homing in on local issues identified by the “poll”. This is distributed to every door not known to be inhabited by hostiles (or Immigrants!). Those whose appearance or manner is less effective on the doorstep can do this.
Later another paper sale attempt will be made to those “don’t knows”. The effectiveness of these leaflets can be gauged both by follow-ups coming from them and by getting feedback from the regular paper-buyers.
Feedback from these people on national literature, especially The Flag, should also be asked for “What did you think of last month’s paper? What did you especially agree with/not like?”) This feedback on every paper/magazine and leaflet issue from every Branch is needed by national centre so we can “fine-tune” our output to make it even more effective for Branches to use.
After a while, potential recruits among the regular paper round can be invited to aspecial Branch meeting. This should to an extent be “stage-managed”, with a carefully designed decoration (flags, banners etc.), literature table (no fringe irrelevance!), audience and the best speakers briefed on local issues.
The aim is to push them into making the final step and signing up, or if they have already to reinforce their enthusiasm and commitment. Boring and divisive meetings should be confined to committed activists. Also special meetings aimed at youth should be held.
“WARD COMMITTEE”
After some months of this, perhaps a year, the Branch should have attained Rung Two on the local ‘ladder to power’. By this stage, there should be enough locally-recruited activists (only a few are required) to form a “Ward Committee”. This is responsible initially for servicing and slowly extending the door-to-door paper round, and putting out local leaflets. Later, it will produce these itself, after training from the Branch.
The Branch itself will thus be freed to commence Rung One in an adjacent ward. In the initial target ward, someone, ideally a local, should be adopted as a local candidate – NOT a few weeks before polling day, but well in advance. This candidate’s main role will be to get him or herself well known, liked and respected in the local ward community. Practical help with local peoples’ problems, e.g. with the Council, should be made available.
Here the aim isn’t to boost the NF directly but to actually help people, thus earning gratitude and respect. So in, for example, letters on behalf of people the NF name (hated and feared by many, especially Communist, “Labour” Councils) should not in general be used.
The measure of actual attainment will be provided by a local candidate’s poll in the target ward – and it is to obtain such a concrete measure, not at this stage to win, that such a seat should be contested. Bv the time Rung Two has been reached, the NF vote should have risen from under 1 to 5 per cent. As has been achieved in their target ward by the “pilot project” Branch, Birmingham, in about 12 months.
INTERNAL POWER
The aim now is for the Branch to bring ward after ward in the target constituency up to Rung Two, so that ward after ward begins to run under its own internal power, freeing Branch activists (who of course may come from another constituency entirely) to move on to the next one.
Rung Three has been reached when most wards in the target seat have their own ward committees and can poll 5-10% in local elections. At this stage the ward committees can set up between them a Constituency Committee, and indeed may as well now apply for admission to the NF Confederacy as a Branch in their own right, since the ultimate NF aim is one Branch per parliamentary seat.
During the Rung Two to Three transition, the best ward candidate should be being built up, years in advance of an election if possible, as a locally known Parliamentary candidate. With an average NF local poll of over 5% and indeed with many of these voters personally known to ward activists as regular paper buyers, a Parliamentary election, General or By, can now be contested with a reasonable prospect of reaching 5% and saving our deposit, boosting credibility locally and nationally. (In fact, it’s pointless to fight seats otherwise, usually five saved deposits are worth 50 1% polls).
The aim now is Rung Four, in which, with credibility enhanced by a saved deposit and good local candidates in place in most wards, the local vote reaches the 25 – 35% mark. At this stage, the NF is a serious local political force. The local media will take us seriously. On previous experience in Blackburn and S.E. London, where this strategy was applied in the mid-70s and worked, some local media, aware that NF voters buy papers, will moderate or even cease their hostility.
Others will not do so, but will resort to careful probing to find our weaknesses.
As pointed out in my last article, given intimate local contact between the Party and the people, the obviously untrue “Nazi” smear will fail. But we must be sure our candidates, in particular, are persons of good, or at least locally acceptable, character without skeletons in cupboards. A local NF HQ advice centre should now be attainable, as well as a local Flag-style paper (perhaps initially simply a 2-page local insert in the Flag).
NF COUNCILLORS
Rung Five sees NF Councillors elected on around 40% of the vote. These must behave themselves, as the eyes of the nation, and a hostile mass media, will be on them. Actual local power may be attainable here too. Again, the first NF Council must be very careful, a showpiece to the country at large. The media will now nationally take the NF seriously, though only as a local phenomenon – areas we do well in will be “Britain’s Alabamas”.
The Race Issue will begin to be moved, by the NF’s rise and Immigrant-Red counter-(and probably over-) reaction toward the centre of the political stage, to our advantage. There will be another Anti-Nazi League, but a party dug in locally and not dependent on the national media to communicate with the public should withstand the challenge this time. Votes in target Parliamentary seats are 25-35%.
At Rung Six, the first NF MPs are elected. The Party is now at the stage reached by the Front National in France, with maybe one million voters. Beyond this point, the NF itself so transforms the nature of British politics that further prediction now is pointless, due to insufficient data. But by the time we reach Rung Six, Rungs Seven, Eight and so on will have been mapped out. And so on to power.
This, as can hopefully be seen, is a concrete plan. Locally, Rung Five has been reached and can be again. What has changed since the 1970s isn’t the British public, which after the race riots is as racialist as ever. It’s the NF, and the way it is perceived by the public. These things are up to us to change.
The mass support of the Seventies is still there. We need to turn towards it, and tap into it in a coherent, planned way, which will avoid the “swamp-and-split” cycle of the 1970s. The NF, like a comet, has spent a long time in the cold and the dark after its first blazing passage near the real world. We have used that time to equip ourselves ideologically, to remove Hitlerites and bourgeois student poseurs, and to evolve a clear plan for power.
Now we have reached the far point of our orbit and we are headed back inward toward the sunlight and the people. Once more we shall blaze forth in the political firmament – but this time we will stay there. If we put the work in.
All this strategy needs for success is a lot of hard, sometimes boring, effort, week after week, month after month, year after year. There may well be no sudden breakthroughs, there may well be some setbacks. But if we stick through it in the coming years, in the end, by our own efforts, we will win:- “Victory or defeat lie in our hands alone” – Let us make sure that our hands forge Victory.
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.
Falangist leader exhumed from Madrid war memorial
On the 120th anniversary of his birth, the remains of Falangist leader José Antonio Primo de Rivera are today being removed from his tomb at the Valley of the Fallen (Valle de los Caídos), a vast memorial to the dead of Spain’s Civil War. H&D‘s Isabel Peralta reported today from the scene of José Antonio’s reburial in Madrid (see video below).
José Antonio founded the Falange Española in 1933 in an effort to transcend petty factionalism and offer Spaniards a non-Marxist critique of capitalism:
“The National-Syndicalist State will not stand cruelly aloof from economic conflicts between men, nor will it look on impassively as the strongest class subjugates the weakest. Our regime will make class struggle totally impossible, since all those cooperating in production will constitute an organic whole therein. We deplore and shall prevent at all costs the abuses of partial vested interests, as well as anarchy in the workforce.”
In November 1936, aged 33, José Antonio was murdered by leftist assassins in the prison yard at Alicante. After the nationalist victory in 1939 his Falangist followers carried José Antonio’s remains 300km to the Escorial near Madrid, and in 1959 he was reburied nearby at the newly consecrated Valley of the Fallen, a huge cathedral carved out of a mountain, where Spain’s caudillo Francisco Franco was also buried in 1975.
For decades the Valley of the Fallen was a place of pilgrimage for Falangist veterans and Spanish nationalists from various factions, who were often joined on November 20th each year (the anniversary of both José Antonio’s murder and Franco’s death) by comrades from across Europe. H&D‘s assistant editor Peter Rushton was part of BNP delegations to the Valley on several occasions during the 1990s.
The left-wing government in Madrid have for several years made clear their determination to desecrate José Antonio’s grave as an act of political spite. Last autumn they introduced new laws designed to criminalise aspects of Spanish history. One was designated a “democratic memory law” and the other was a new law against “anti-semitism”, which effectively means a law exempting Jews and Zionism from criticism.
José Antonio’s family surrendered to official pressure, and took the decision to go ahead with his exhumation and reburial of his remains at Madrid’s San Isidro cemetery.
H&D correspondent Isabel Peralta first wrote about the impending exhumation of José Antonio in Issue 110 of our magazine, and also made several videos discussing related issues (see versions below with English subtitles).
Isabel has recently been banned from Twitter but has a new website at www.isabelperalta.net with an English version at www.isabelperalta.net/english
Reports on the Spanish government’s attack on their own history will appear at these sites and here at H&D. Isabel also writes in the forthcoming edition of our magazine, which will be published at the start of May.
St George’s Day – Celebrate the Spirit of St George!
The editor and assistant editor would like to wish all H&D readers a very happy St George’s Day.
While St George’s Day – April 23rd – is mainly forgotten, ignored or even ridiculed by the liberal / left establishment, who by the way have no qualms about promoting everybody else’s national day, culture and heritage – apart from ours – we nationalists remember and celebrate it.
In past years our movement used to celebrate St George’s Day with large marches and rallies all over England, including the NF’s famous events in Bradford (Yorkshire) in 1976, Wood Green (North London) in 1977, and Leicester (East Midlands) in 1979. Sadly those days are long gone now.
As Sir Oswald Mosley said on St George’s Day 1937:
“In the lives of great nations comes the moment of decision, comes the moment of destiny – and this nation again and again in the great hours of fate has swept aside the little men of talk and delay, and has decided to follow men and movements who say we go forward to action! Let who dare follow us in this hour.”
While many English (and British) nationalists feel a fierce national pride for the St George’s cross and the patron saint’s day, England in fact shares St George with a host of other countries and places. Each has its own unusual customs surrounding his feast day, including:
Catalonia, Spain – St George (Sant Jordi) is associated with several places in Spain but one of the most colourful is Barcelona. A public holiday is held in the area and has several similarities with Valentine’s Day, with roses and books being exchanged by lovers. Barcelona’s most popular street Las Ramblas becomes awash with flower and book sellers. Catalonia has managed to export the tradition as UNESCO adopted the date as World Book Day. And FC Barcelona have the St George cross in the club’s badge.
Albania – Albanians celebrate St George’s day by going out and lighting a large bonfire and playing around it as a sign of joy.
Bulgaria – Roasting a whole lamb is traditional on St George’s Day in Bulgaria as he is the patron saint of shepherds. It is seen as a day when evil enchantments can be broken and a blessed day when the saint blesses the crop and morning dew, so many walk in the early morning to wash their face in the fresh dew.
Croatia – Croatians also use fire to mark St George’s Day which is considered the first day of Spring. In the Slavic tradition girls are dressed as goddesses in leaves and sing for locals.
Back in England normally many local pubs in White working class area (and even a few in the middle class suburbs) would organise events to celebrate St George’s Day, but most would be content with just putting out a few England flags (then taking them down the next day – so as not to offend!)
This year a number of H&D supporters will be taking part in the big St George’s Day parades in Nottingham in the East Midlands and Solihull in the West Midlands. Closer to H&D Towers, the Blackburn Times pub in Blackburn town centre is again organising an all-day party to celebrate St George’s Day, to the horror of the local Labour Council, who fall over backwards to promote alien events.
Of course the Woke, politically correct, do-gooder, snowflake brigade, etc, would rather St George’s Day be forgotten, and confined to the dustbin of history, along with Empire Day, Trafalgar Day etc.
However, St George’s Day and the spirit of St George will still be celebrated at H&D Towers (where England flags fly proudly all the year round), where the editor and webmaster will raise a glass a two to our patron saint, to England and to the English, while there’s still a few of us left!
And finally, to quote from William Shakespeare’s Henry V (1598):
This story shall the good man teach his son;
And Crispin Crispian shall ne’er go by,
From this day to the ending of the world,
But we in it shall be rememberèd;
We few, we happy few, we band of brothers;
For he to-day that sheds his blood with me
Shall be my brother; be he ne’er so vile,
This day shall gentle his condition:
And gentlemen in England now a-bed
Shall think themselves accurs’d they were not here,
And hold their manhood’s cheap whiles any speaks
That fought with us upon Saint Crispin’s day.