Under Tyndall's leadership it capitalised on growing concern about South Asian migration to Britain, rapidly increasing its membership and vote share in the urban areas of east London and northern England.

Its public profile was raised through street marches and rallies, which often resulted in violent clashes with anti-fascist protesters, most notably the 1974 Red Lion Square disorders and the 1977 Battle of Lewisham.

[12] Over the following months, many far-rightists visited Chesterton at his Croydon apartment to discuss the proposal,[11] among them Andrew Fountaine and Philip Maxwell of the British National Party (BNP),[13] David Brown of the Racial Preservation Society (RPS),[14] and John Tyndall and Martin Webster of the Greater Britain Movement (GBM).

[40] The party faced militant left-wing opposition, including the driving of a lorry into its Tulse Hill building in 1969,[41] and to counter this the NF installed a spy in London's anti-fascist movement.

[42] Against Chesterton's wishes, NF activists carried out publicity stunts: in 1968 they marched onto a London Weekend Television show uninvited and in 1969 assaulted two Labour Party ministers.

[45] Frustrated that Tyndall maintained links with neo-Nazi groups like the Northern League,[46] O'Brien and his supporters ultimately left the NF for the National Independence Party in June 1972.

[51] In his history of fascism, Roger Eatwell noted that with Tyndall as chair, "the NF tried hard to hide its neo-Nazism from public view, fearing it might damage popular support.

[100] Reflecting the Nouvelle Droite's influence,[91] the Strasserite Official NF promoted support for "a broad front of racialists of all colours" who were seeking an end to multi-racial society and capitalism,[93] praising black nationalists like Louis Farrakhan and Marcus Garvey.

[101] Their publication, Nationalism Today, featured positive articles on the Libyan and Iranian governments, presenting them as part of a global anti-capitalist and anti-Marxist third force;[102] they may have also seen Libya and Iran as potential sources of funding.

[117] The political psychologist Michael Billig notes that the NF displayed many of fascism's recurring traits: an emphasis on nationalism and racism, an anti-Marxist stance, statism and support for private enterprise, and a hostile view of democracy and personal freedom.

[124] 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 antisemitic conspiracy theories.

[140] 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.

[151] Tyndall defended Nazi Germany's lebensraum policy,[152] and under his leadership the NF promoted imperialist views about expanding British territory to create "living space" for the country's growing population.

[157] It believed that racial segregation was natural and ordained by God,[158] but that non-whites had been encouraged to migrate to Britain and other white-majority countries to breed with the indigenous inhabitants and thus bring about "white genocide" through assimilation.

[166] Its booklist offered academic and quasi-academic books endorsing scientific racism;[156] early party literature often referenced the work of Hans Eysenck, William Shockley, Arthur Jensen and Richard Herrnstein,[167] while Spearhead and other NF publications repeatedly cited articles from the Mankind Quarterly.

[171] It stated that the "repatriation" process could take ten years,[172] adding that before deportation, non-whites would be stripped of British citizenship and placed behind white Britons when it came to access to welfare, education and housing.

[181] As it developed, the NF press included racially inflammatory headlines like "Black Savages Terrorize Old Folk" and "Asians Import Bizarre Sex-Murder Rites",[182] also comparing non-white migrants to vermin by describing areas as "immigrant-infested".

[215] 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.

[217] Under its Strasserite leadership during the 1980s, the NF adopted a different position on governance, influenced heavily by the Third International Theory propounded by Libya's leader Muammar Gaddafi in The Green Book.

[218] Regarding international institutions as part of the Jewish conspiracy's plan for a one world government,[219] the Front opposed UK membership of the United Nations[220] and the European Economic Community (EEC).

[221] To replace the EEC, the NF called for stronger UK 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.

[258] From its early years the NF promoted a tough stance on law and order,[259] calling for harsher criminal sentencing,[259] tougher prisons,[260] and the reintroduction of both capital punishment,[259] and national service.

[277] This was linked to the idea that each NF member should be a "political soldier", a "New Type of Man" who rejected the "materialist nightmare" of contemporary capitalist society and underwent a personal "Spiritual Revolution" to dedicate themselves fully to the nation.

[327] In other cases, individuals may have left because the hardship they encountered — social ostracism, job losses, verbal abuse and, on rare occasions, assault — became too much to endure, particularly as the party's fortunes declined in the latter 1970s.

[333] Fielding also noted that the party contained individuals of all age ranges, although added that men in their thirties and fifties predominated over those in their forties, suggesting that the latter were typically preoccupied with raising families.

[275] While the party attracts significant numbers of working-class people the role they play in the branch is contingent on their political ability and zeal, and there is no doubt that it is those drawn from the upper ranks of the working class who predominate...

[335] He noted that race was the main issue that led members to join the Front,[141] that they perceived their racial ideas to be "common sense",[336] and that they expressed harsh prejudices against non-white Britons.

[348] A 1978 survey in the East End by New Society found that while most white residents thought the immigration rate too high, many related positive relationships with Afro-Caribbean and Asian migrants and opposed the NF.

[403] That November, various left and far-left groups launched the Anti-Nazi League (ANL),[404] which gained public endorsements from several Labour politicians, trade union leaders, academics, actors, musicians and athletes, some of whom later distanced themselves from it amid concerns that its sub-campaign, School Kids Against the Nazis, was politicising schoolchildren with leftist propaganda.

[408] Taylor noted that by the end of 1977, an "unprecedented range of groups from almost every section of British society spreading right across the political spectrum had declared an intention to oppose the NF and the racism upon which it fed".