Far-Right Members of the European Parliament from the United Kingdom
It is difficult to suppress a certain amount of mirth at the fate of the Liberal Party in 1979: having sold their support to Labour for a mess of pottage (namely the introduction of the Single Transferable Vote at the newfangled 'European elections', they reaped a paltry four seats due to several factors, including the emboldening of voters to waste their high preferences on frivolous minor parties. One of the less frivolous parties, indeed, equalled the Liberals' haul on a much smaller vote - namely, the National Front. For the next ten years, readers of British newspapers thrilled to hear the exploits of their fascist representatives in Brussels. For devotees of soap-opera drama, it was a halcyon period.
John Tyndall
- National Front MEP for London North (1979-1980)
- New National Front MEP for London North (1980-1982)
- British National Party MEP for London North (1982-1984)
- British National Party MEP for London North West and Thames Valley (1984-1989)
The central figure of the National Front for the previous decade, the officious Nazi Tyndall was facing party turmoil even as the Front achieved as good a result as it could ever hope to achieve. A month before, the general election had brought Margaret Thatcher to office on a ticket broadly acceptable to many NF supporters, leaving the many expensive candidacies mounted by Tyndall's party looking like white elephants - with the emphasis firmly on 'white'. The elevation of some of Tyndall's rivals to five-year sinecure positions in Europe hastened the end of Tyndall's leadership of the NF, and an attempt to oust the main organiser, Martin Webster, ended up with Tyndall starting his own new racialist party, the New NF, in opposition to the 'gay National Front'.
As the NF's demise continued apace, multiple far-right groupuscules emerged, and by 1982, there was a mood to reunite: hence the BNP, an "SDP of the far right" and a personal plaything of the Chairman. The Tyndallites achieved little more than the re-election of their regimental-tie leader to a redrawn, but still crucially five-member, constituency in 1984, from which platform he attracted headlines for his racist outbursts and spiralled into ever more autocratic behaviour - such as a bizarre command to the rank and file not to contest the 1987 general election at all. Tyndall was defeated in 1989 and lapsed into obscurity.
Anthony Reed Herbert
- National Front MEP for Midlands East (1979)
- British Democratic Party MEP for Midlands East (1979-1982)
- British National Party MEP for Midlands East (1982-1984)
Reed Herbert followed an unusual path to the National Front: he was bullied at school by Salman Rushdie and clearly bore a grudge. In the early 70s, he was a key mediating figure between the Powellite populists and the avowedly fascist Tyndall wing of the Front, and split off in late 1979 in order to start a new, more respectable party, free from the taint of neo-Nazi skinheads and biological racialists. However, the BDP was holed below the waterline almost immediately: a key organising figure in the Party was Ray Hill, an anti-fascist mole, who leaked the membership list and revealed that the supposedly moderate BDP was holding secret vigils on Hitler's birthday. In 1981, members of the BDP were discovered to be attempting to smuggle weapons and radio equipment into the country, which rather put the lie to their branding. Reed Herbert returned to the Tyndallite fold upon the formation of the BNP, apparently having moved beyond his qualms regarding open Fascism.
The BDP achieved some ephemeral success in local government in Leicester, the group was dead by the time Reed Herbert was defeated (pitifully) at the next European elections.
Andrew Fountaine
- National Front MEP for East Anglia and Cambridgeshire (1979)
- Constitutional Movement MEP for East Anglia and Cambridgeshire (1979-1982)
- Nationalist Party MEP for East Anglia and Cambridgeshire (1982-1984)
Similarly to Reed Herbert, Andrew Fountaine was elected in 1979 with the full intention of moving away from the boot-boy image of Tyndall and Webster, and formed the Constitutional Movement in the November of that year, after losing a leadership challenge. Fountaine, who had fought for Franco in the Spanish Civil War, was a founding member of the NF, but had moved away from Tyndall and sought to present a moderate image. However, it was not to be: the Constitutional Movement was cursed with bad luck, its headquarters catching fire in mysterious circumstances and one of its camaigners being murdered. Fountaine swiftly grew tired of faction-fighting both internal and external (sharing a building with the NF head office caused some difficulties) and lost the initiative when Tyndall announced the formation of the BNP. Many of the members switched over at this point, despite the 'Nationalist Party' rebrand. Fountaine rarely appeared in Brussels after 1982, preferring to tend his country estate in Norfolk.
Martin Webster
- National Front MEP for Midlands West (1979-1983)
- Our Nation MEP for Midlands West (1983-1984)
The homosexual Martin Webster had been the main organiser (and the only candidate ever to save a deposit) for the National Front in the 1970s and, despite his extracurricular activities, retained more loyalty among the upper echelons than John Tyndall did - ultimately becoming Chairman when Tyndall left for the New NF. In the early 1980s, Webster was the main player in a party increasingly marginalised and radicalised by the existence of more moderate alternatives, such as the BDP, the CM and the Tories. The younger generation, hitherto closely associated with Webster, began to dabble with oddball ideas around Strasserism and continental clerico-fascist theories espoused by people with foreign names. This grouping had the numbers to oust Webster in 1983, and his attempt at a more traditional alternative party failed to attract the people who had been loyal to him in 1979 and 80. Nevertheless, Webster scored a creditable 5% in 1984.
Andrew Brons
- National Front MEP for Yorkshire North and West (1984-1986)
- National Front (Flag Group) MEP for Yorkshire North and West (1986-1989)
Most commentators predicted the demise of the far-right in the 1984 Euro elections, save perhaps for the re-election of John Tyndall, but the voters demonstrated that the recognisable name of the National Front was worth a considerable number of votes, and three NF candidates fluked their way into Strasbourg. One, Harrogate-based school-teacher Andrew Brons, was significant at first in his role as the lynch-pin between the fractious alliance in the Front between the old-style racialists and the 'Political Soldier' wing of pallid young men quoting Codreanu, Evola and Tolkien at each other. Brons was Chairman from 1980, but was consistently overshadowed by others (Webster at first), and only came into his own in 1986, when he staged the walkout of the 'Flag Group' from the National Front. This group was rooted in the racialism and Nazism of the 1970s NF, but differed in its promotion of populist Strasserism as a key point of difference from the Tories. Nevertheless, Brons now played second fiddle to other Flag Group personalities, and failed to achieve a merger with the BNP - although he sat in a group with Tyndall from 1987 until his retirement at the end of the term. Harrogate College did not rehire him.
Nick Griffin
- National Front MEP for London South and Surrey (1984-1986)
- Official National Front MEP for London South and Surrey (1986-1989)
- International Third Position MEP for London South and Surrey (1989)
Croydon-based Nick Griffin was the hope of the Political Soldier faction of the National Front in 1984. A close friend of Italian terrorist Roberto Fiore, he devoured Evola, Codreanu and ruralist mysticism. Griffin made special reference to black nationalism and won the support of Colonel Gaddafi, who donated a crate of copies of his book for the 'Official' NF to flog. Of course, the Officials were just as odd from an organisational point of view as they were from an ideological perspective, refusing to accept new members, demanding full dedication to the revolutionary cadre, and refusing to participate in elections. Griffin even had to be persuaded to vote in European Parliament divisions. Since the 1989 schism in the ONF, Griffin has lived on an environmentalist commune in Spain with his fellow Political Soldiers, and has only disturbed the headline-writers once more since then, pooh-poohing the idea that there is any financial tawdriness involved in the funding system for said commune.
Patrick Harrington
- National Front MEP for London North East and Essex (1984-1986)
- Official National Front MEP for London North East and Essex (1986-1989)
- Third Way MEP for London North East and Essex (1989)
Another of the Political Soldiers, Patrick Harrington took the ethnopluralist ideas of the movement to their logical conclusion: in 1989, he gave tacit approval to the IRA and actual approval to the state of Israel, neither of which made him flavour of the month in the far-right ecosystem. Even the majority of the Official NF drew the line at 'Zionism', and split off under Nick Griffin to form the International Third Position, while Harrington and friends transformed their group into Third Way, a party espousing Distributism, Social Credit, environmentalism and co-operatism. Unlike the ITP, Third Way has returned to electoralism as a strategy, but has not seen any success whatsoever. In later years, Third Way has made a point of running candidates from diverse ethnic backgrounds.
The 1989 election saw all far-right candidates defeated, concluding an interesting and distressing period in the UK's political history. Since 1989, all third-party action has been concentrated on the Lib Dems, the Scottish and Welsh nationalists, and especially the Greens, who first broke through in those same European elections. As such, no subsequent British MEP can be seriously considered a Fascist - with the arguable exception of David Icke.