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.