Barometer | 30 October 2010

Exit stage right


A new far-right movement, the English Defence League, held protests in Leicester and London. Postwar British history is full of the corpses of failed far-right parties.

— The League of Empire Loyalists was a neo-Nazi party which split in 1957 over whether to allow Jews to join. Why any would want to was a mystery.

— The National Socialist Movement was founded in 1962 but split two years later after two of its leaders, Colin Jordan and John Tyndall, fought over the same woman.

— The British Movement was formed from the remains of the National Socialist Movement in 1968. It won 2.5% of the vote in Aston in the 1970 general election but dwindled after its leader, Colin Jordan, was prosecuted for stealing three pairs of ladies’ knickers from a Tesco in 1975.

— The National Front still lingers on but never recovered from a split in the 1980s which culminated in two factions, the Official National Front and the Flag National Front, barracking each other in the Vauxhall by-election of 1989.