The National Front (II)

This chapter assesses the state of the National Front as it sought to contribute to the loyalist/Unionist struggle against the imposition of the Anglo-Irish Agreement (AIA), an agreement reached between the British and Irish Governments, and which infuriated the loyalist and Unionist community as the Irish Government was given an advisory role in the governance of Northern Ireland, and worrying because it was uncertain whether and when such ‘influence’ would be instrumental or marginal. Opposition involved cooperation with loyalist paramilitaries but proved worrying when loyalist paramilitaries resorted to sectarian violence. For the NF, however, its already limited scope for action in Northern Ireland was reduced further by an internal split provoked by a new leadership cadre headed by Nick Griffin, which sought to turn the organisation into a revolutionary movement proposing the creation of an independent Ulster, and opposed by a ‘Flag’ faction which sought co-operation with Unionist and loyalist leaders. As Unionist opposition to the AIA failed and Government rejected its position that it would refuse to negotiate until the agreement was abandoned. By 1990 Unionist leaders had agreed to talks with the Government at the same time as divisions within the NF led to its collapse.

Northern Ireland

This chapter assesses comparatively the attitude to Northern Ireland of Oswald Mosley and Enoch Powell, both seen as right wing politicians, if of varying degrees of extremism. For Mosley Powell was seen as a threat to his own position as a public figure, one whose controversial speech on immigration at Birmingham in 1968 attracted the kind of public support long unavailable to him, a pariah figure in British politics. Yet both were authoritarian figures, convinced of the certitude of their own opinions and with little time for dissentient views. On Northern Ireland, however, they exhibited significant differences. Mosley’s experience of British policy during the Irish War of Independence gave him an informed outlook on the kind of repressive and morally reprehensible measures it was necessary to avoid, and that a solution to the problem would require some kind of constitutional modification. Powell, in contrast, developed a paranoid conspiracy mindset, seeing the United Kingdom under threat from enemies within and without and with Northern Ireland just the latest site of conflict; and like the extreme Right offering a limited ‘law and order’ solution to the Troubles.

Rotha Lintorn-Orman, Ulster and the British Fascists Movement

This chapter focuses on the first British fascist organisation to emerge in the early 1920s, founded by Rotha Lintorn-Orman. Prompted by the triumph of communism in Russia and its development more widely in Europe, Lintorn-Orman was convinced that Britain’s parliamentary system would be inadequate to meet a serious communist threat and that stronger paramilitary methods would be needed. It demonstrates that, unlike later fascist organisations, informed by a vision of national transformation based on corporatism, Lintorn-Orman’s movement existed to defend existing British values and institutions. The test of its national utility came with the General Strike of 1926 when the Government made unacceptable conditions on accepting its help, thereby causing a split in the movement and a subsequent extension of recruitment activities to Northern Ireland to restore its strength. However, progress proved difficult, due partly to the disreputable nature of regional leaders, the limited relevance of mainstream British concerns in the region and the fact that the region’s Unionist Government had an already effective police force in addition to a substantial paramilitary organisation at its disposal.

The British Union of Fascists and Northern Ireland (II)

This chapter examines the emergence and activities of the BUF- sponsored Ulster Fascists, a regional formation heavily influenced by the great surge of support for the BUF in Britain when Lord Rothermere threw his support behind Mosley in 1933, encouraging the belief that a Mosley Government would soon be in power. The chapter demonstrates the problems the UF faced in a largely hostile environment, with opposition from the Unionist authorities and labour and socialist organisations; and eventually by the Irish News, the main organ of nationalist and Catholic opinion in Northern Ireland and which had given it a high degree of publicity. It was affronted by UF defence of Nazi repression in Germany, especially denial of persecution of the Catholic Church, and by differences on moral issues between the BUF and Catholic teaching. Failing to prosper in a political context offering little space for externally inspired parties, the UF suffered internal divisions and collapsed in early 1935.

The British National Party and Ulster

This chapter assesses the attempts of the British National Party, now the major extreme Right formation to impact on the Ulster problem in the 1990s, a decade which would see the Provisional IRA and loyalist paramilitary ceasefires and the difficult and torturous process that would produce the Belfast/Good Friday Agreement of 1998, an agreement that effectively ended the Troubles. For the BNP, however, the decade would be one of evolution as John Tyndall’s control of was gradually broken by Nick Griffin. Influenced by the electoral success of Jean Marine Le Pen’s Front National in France, Griffin would begin the process of party modernisation that would see the BNP gain 60 local council seats a two seat in the European Parliament in the first decade of this century. As the BNP’s British fortunes brightened Ulster as an issue gradually disappeared from its literature. British progress sweetened the pill of failure in Northern Ireland as the previous unfruitful experience of the extreme Right in Northern Ireland was repeated; with even the White Nationalist Party failing to make a major impact even as Northern Ireland developed a serious racist problem.

The National Front (I)

This chapter assesses the efforts of the National Front to exploit the Ulster problem as it sought to expand on its progress in Britain in the early 1970s and it activities in Northern Ireland thereafter. For some loyalists such early progress had initially suggested that the NF might be a valuable ally in their struggle against the Provisional IRA. However, as its fortunes in Britain diminished in the 1970s –and with it any prospect that it could significantly influence British public opinion in their interest - the NF connection appeared less as a help than a hindrance and unwelcome not least when the level of Catholic membership in its leadership was discovered. However, the persistence of the Ulster conflict, especially a series of developments from 1980, seen as a British betrayal of Northern Ireland, ensured that it would continue to attract the NF’s interest. And yet it was never entirely clear for much of this period what its involvement was for – to assist loyalist organisations or to replace them. Nor did changes of organisation and operation in the early to mid-1980s do much to progress NF interests in the region.

Union Movement

This chapter focuses on the place of the partition question in the politics of the Union Movement, Mosley’s new organisation intended to deliver on his political ambitions in the post-war era. Learning from the failure of the Ulster fascists in the 1930s, no attempt was made to organise in Northern Ireland. Instead, on Ireland the UM focused its attention on the immigrant Irish community in Britain and in terms of Mosley’s new political project, Europe-A-Nation. In this neo-fascist scenario Irish unity was envisioned as taking place when Ireland as a whole joined the new European project. At one level advanced in its conception of European union, its prospects for realisation were remote given Mosley’s now pariah status in Britain, its departure from traditional nationalist conceptions of Irish unity and the failure of his movement to attract significant immigrant Irish support, graphically demonstrated at the North Kensington contest during the 1959 general election, when Mosley failed to even secure his deposit. Political failure, however, would lead to more realist assessments of the nature of the Northern Ireland problem in the later 1960s.

Introduction

This section identifies the influence of Irish developments in establishing the context in which British proto-fascism developed in the early years of the twentieth century. It has a focus on the British Brothers League (BBL) which emerged in the wake of the large influx into London of mainly Jewish immigrants from western Russia and identifies antisemitism as a central factor driving the development of the BBL and as an element of later fascist movements. It also registers the factors that limited the BBL’s development, a mainly one-issue movement whose demands were met by the Aliens Act of 1905, narrow geographic recruitment and the lack of a charismatic leader. This section also examines the significance of the threatened Ulster rebellion of 1912-14 as a factor influencing inter-war debate about the prospects for successful fascist revolt in Britain.

Conclusion

In summarising the findings of this study a number of points can be made. First, as a region of the United Kingdom Ulster/Northern Ireland stands out for the singularity of its history and characteristics. While for other regions of the British State the issue of nationality only arose in very singular circumstances such as those created by a world war, in Ulster the divided national identities of its people and the constitutional claims of Irish Governments meant that issues of nationality were a perennial concern, rendering the usual bread and butter issues common to British politics to a secondary position. Similarly, fears of communist subversion such as stimulated extreme right agitation in Britain for much of this period, was a very marginal issue in Northern Ireland. Accordingly, despite commitment to common symbols of Britishness the singularity of its concerns had created a political environment which left very little space for new entrants to occupy, despite, latterly, a growing race problem. The extreme Right’s effective target community was the Protestant and loyalist people, but only if it had become a major force in British politics would it have had some leverage in Northern Ireland.

The British Union of Fascists and Northern Ireland (I)

This chapter examines the place of Ulster and in particular the issue of Irish unity in the politics of Sir Oswald Mosley’s British Union of fascists. Mosley’s role in ending Black and Tan repression in Ireland during the War of Independence earned him a degree of Irish support throughout his political life, and which he sought to cultivate when he formed his fascist organisation through support for Irish unity. At the same time the chapter demonstrates that some of the organisation’s most prominent members supported Unionism and partition. This duality of approach was determined largely by the need to maximise and retain support from as many quarters as possible and by the play of politics, with the BUF cautiously critical of the Ulster Unionist regime in 1933-34 when the pro-Unionist press baron, Lord Rothermere, was supporting it, more aggressively nationalist when its pro-Unionist element diminished in the latter part of the decade.