Ideology of the National Front (UK)
These beliefs, including nationalism, racism, and opposition to Marxism, have been compared to fascism, although the party rejected the term as a description of its political stance.
On the one hand it follows an opportunistic policy of attempting to present itself as a respectable political party appealing by argument and peaceful persuasion for the support of the British electorate.
[17] As noted by Billig, the NF's "ideological core, and its genocidal tendencies, are hidden" so as not to scare off potential recruits sympathetic to its nationalism and anti-immigration stance but not its anti-Semitic conspiracy theories.
[23] According to Wilkinson, this faction's leadership was "deeply imbued with Nazi ideas" and retained "intimate connections with small Neo-Nazi cells in Britain and abroad".
[1] According to Thurlow, the ex-GBM faction oversaw "an attempt to portray the essentials of Nazi ideology in more rational language and seemingly reasonable arguments".
[24] Taylor also regarded the 1970s NF as a Nazi outfit because of its specific fixation on anti-Semitic conspiracy theories, a feature not present in all fascist groups.
[41] The essential facet of nationalism in the NF ideology is the belief that Britain forms an entity that cannot be dismantled without irreparable harm and that the maintenance of British culture requires the exclusion of outsiders.
[49] Fielding believed that the "dialectic of insiders and outsiders" was the "linchpin of its ideology",[50] and noted that the NF's "rigid boundaries between in-group and out-group" was typical of the far-right.
[52] Tyndall defended Nazi Germany's lebensraum policy,[53] and under his leadership the NF promoted imperialist views about expanding British territory to serve as "living space" for the country's growing population.
[59] It promoted the conspiracy theory that non-whites were intentionally encouraged to migrate to Britain and other white-majority countries to breed with the indigenous inhabitants and thus bring about "white genocide" through assimilation.
[71] Its booklist offered academic and quasi-academic books endorsing scientific racism,[57] and early party literature regularly referenced the work of Hans Eysenck, William Shockley, Arthur Jensen, and Richard Herrnstein.
[57] The cornerstone of the National Front's manifesto since 1974 has been the compulsory deportation of all non-white immigrants, along with their descendants,[75] as well as the white British partners in mixed-race relationships.
[76] It stated that the "repatriation" process could take ten years,[77] adding that before deportation, non-whites would be stripped of British citizenship and placed behind white Britons when it comes to access to welfare, education, and housing.
[84] Its early manifestos and other publications generally avoided describing non-whites with derogatory terms like "wog" or "nigger",[85] although such language was used at party rallies.
[94] This anti-immigrant discourse was similar to that employed against Ashkenazi Jewish migrants in the late 19th century and also echoed the response to gypsies and Huguenots in 17th-century England.
[100] Such views are a conspiracy theory,[77] part of a longstanding conspiracist tradition about secretive groups manipulating international events that stretches back to the 18th century.
[119] Fielding nevertheless believed that "the essence of the NF ideology is incompatible with democracy" and instead reflects an "elitist tendency" quite at odds with the "populist rhetoric" that it used to promote its message.
[124] In Spearhead, Tyndall stated that "it is only in banana republics, where the 'sophisticated' Western institutions of a multi- or two-party system, powerful trade unions and a 'free' press have not yet taken root, that there is still scope for men of real personality and decision to emerge and truly lead.
[127] Under the party's Strasserite leadership during the 1980s, the NF adopted a radically different position on governance, influenced heavily by the Third International Theory propounded by Libya's leader Muammar Gaddafi in his The Green Book.
[128] In its view of this future, the British population would be armed and trained in military tactics, allowing for the establishment of local militias rather than a state-controlled professional army.
[132] To replace the EEC, the NF called for the UK to establish stronger links with the "White countries" of the British Commonwealth, namely Canada, Australia, and New Zealand, but also the white-minority governments of Rhodesia and South Africa.
[136] It stipulated that it would cease the payment of foreign aid,[137] and called for withdrawal from the United Nations, claiming that the organisation was a "major weapon of International Finance" and unduly impacted by a "Communist and AfroAsian [sic] influence".
[145] In 1985—by which time Strasserites dominated the NF—it called on Northern Ireland to unilaterally declare independence from the UK in response to the Anglo-Irish Agreement.
[155] After the Strasserite faction took control of the party in the 1980s, it adopted distributist policies, maintaining the emphasis on an economic system neither capitalist nor socialist.
[158] Retaining the party's longstanding economic nationalism, the Strasserite leadership called for the abolition of the stock exchange, with the introduction of import controls and bans on the export of capital.
[159] As a solution to unemployment, the party stated that it would encourage urban-to-rural migration, with heavily mechanised agriculture being replaced by small, privately owned, labour-intensive farms.
[163] It claimed that what it perceived as the growing permissiveness of British society had resulted in moral decadence and social decay, and alleged that this was orchestrated by the Jewish conspiracy.
[173] The issue decreased in resonance within the party during the early 1980s but was re-emphasised when the Strasserites took control:[174] in 1987, National Front News claimed that abortion was "the greatest and most fundamentally evil holocaust that the world has ever seen".
[183] That decade, the party stressed its belief that education should be suited to the varying academic abilities of different students although did not outright condemn the comprehensive school system.
[154] Since its early years, the NF promoted a tough stance on law and order,[185] calling for harsher sentences for criminals,[185] tougher prisons,[186] and the reintroduction of capital punishment.
