The ONF emerged in the early 1980s when young radicals such as Nick Griffin, Derek Holland, Patrick Harrington and David Kerr became attracted to Third Position ideas and, eschewing the route of electoral politics favoured by the National Front up to that point, hoped to develop a cadre of devoted nationalist revolutionaries.
With control assured the ONF took on responsibility for instructing its members ideologically and gained the backing of Rosine de Bounevialle, a veteran of the League of Empire Loyalists and the publisher of the anti-Semitic journal Candour, who allowed these training seminars to be held on her Hampshire estate.
[5] Aided by Roberto Fiore, whose Terza Posizione held similar views, the ONF developed an ideology that stressed the need for a "New Man" with the cadre structure influenced by the "nest" system of the pre-Second World War Romanian Iron Guard.
[6] The party put emphasis on the values of ruralism with Nick Griffin, who lived on a farm in Wales, running a "Smash the Cities" campaign for the ONF that has been compared by Nicholas Goodrick-Clarke to Pol Potism.
[9] The 'scientific racism' that had been the cornerstone of NF ideas up to that point was abandoned by the ONF in favour of an emphasis on ethnopluralism and expressions of admiration for Black separatist leaders such as Farrakhan and Marcus Garvey, a new departure illustrated by the August 1987 edition of National Front News in which the slogan 'Black is beautiful' appeared.
[16] The group's devotion to the likes of Evola and Codreanu also damaged its chances as these thinkers were virtually unknown in Britain and as such the ONF's ideas were considered too foreign to be relevant to a British context.
The move proved unpopular with Griffin and Holland who broke off in 1989 to form the International Third Position (ITP), which advocated anti-capitalist Strasserist views, as well as continuing anti-Zionism.