Obituary - Colin Jordan

Key figure in the postwar British fascist movement

When Colin Jordan, who has died aged 85, mounted the platform at a "National Socialist Movement" rally in Trafalgar Square on 1 July 1962, it was the high point of his career on the extreme right. Behind him, a banner proclaiming "Free Britain From Jewish Control" and "Britain Awake" echoed the slogans of Hitler's regime.

Uniformed in the mode of what the NSM termed its "paramilitary force", Spearhead - brown shirt, boots and pagan sunwheel armband - he regaled some 5,000 people with abuse. This crowd comprised around 800 supporters, attracted by the NSM's hatred for Jews and democracy, and some 4,200 opponents. By the time the police arrested the speakers, a riot was under way. Many of Jordan's supporters were injured and their military-style Land Rovers damaged.

Later that year Jordan and his core officers, including John Tyndall, who went on to lead the National Front and found today's British National party, were convicted at the Old Bailey under the 1936 Public Order Act for organising and equipping a paramilitary force for political ends. Jordan was jailed for nine months.

The son of a postman, he was educated at Warwick school and saw war service in the Royal Army Medical Corps. After the war he graduated with a second in history from Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge. There he became attracted to the ideas of Arnold Leese, who had led the prewar Imperial Fascist League. Leese, who as early as 1928 had advocated the gassing of Jews, had been in open conflict in the 1930s with what was then Britain's main far-right organisation, Sir Oswald Mosley's British Union of Fascists. Leese labelled the BUF "kosher fascist".

At Cambridge Jordan formed a "nationalist club", and after graduating set up the Birmingham Nationalist Book Club. In 1956 he collected his first conviction, for insulting words and behaviour during a protest by a fascist front, the League of Empire Loyalists. He formed the White Defence League, which he ran from a Notting Hill property left to him by Leese, who had died that same year. The WDL was active at the time of the Notting Hill riots and the racist murder of the Antiguan-born Kelso Cochrane, 50 years ago next month.

Later Jordan merged his group with the "National Labour party" to form the original British National party in 1960. In January 1962, after a disagreement with colleagues who felt Jordan's open nazism was a bar to progress, Jordan and Tyndall stormed out, taking Spearhead. On 20 April, Hitler's birthday, they formed the NSM.

That summer George Lincoln Rockwell, leader of the American Nazi party, entered Britain illegally. At a weekend camp, near Temple Guiting in the Cotswolds, attended by Nazis from around Europe, Rockwell and Jordan produced the "Cotswold Declaration", which led to the formation of a "World Union of National Socialists". Its statement of the "modern national socialist world view" contained principles that are echoed by the British far-right parties today. The presence of these would-be members of the master race in the vicinity led to a vigorous, physical attack by locals.

Jordan made frequent court appearances during the 1960s and 70s. These included taking part in an antisemitic demonstration in support of the Nazi war criminal Adolf Eichmann, who was executed in 1962. In the mid-1960s NSM supporters carried out 34 arsons against Jewish buildings in London. One attack on a Stamford Hill theological college left one student dead and another seriously injured. Members of the Jewish defence organisation, the 62 Group, helped the police uncover the perpetrators, who included a Welsh Guardsman, a former paratrooper, several youngsters with social problems and Jordan's then wife, the French heiress Françoise Dior, a niece of the fashion designer. Dior, engaged to Tyndall in 1962, married Jordan in 1963. The marriage collapsed in mid-decade. Jordan was not charged over the arson.

In 1967 Jordan was imprisoned for 18 months for peddling racist literature. In his absence the NSM was re-formed as the British Movement (BM). After his release Jordan led the openly Nazi BM but allowed some of his followers to form the would-be terrorist National Socialist Group. The NSG plotted to assassinate Harold Wilson, the prime minister, stockpiled weapons and obtained car bomb diagrams. After exposure the group dispersed.

In 1975, Jordan was fined for stealing three pairs of red knickers from Tesco, which did little to boost his credibility. He passed on the BM leadership to Michael McLaughlin, a Liverpool milkman.

In later life Jordan devoted himself to advocating the formation of a "vanguard" to carry out "guerrilla activities" against the state until the time was ready for "the physical seizure of state power by our people".

He resurrected Gothic Ripples - a publication Leese had begun in 1945 - and wrote two novels on the theme of a violent takeover of society. More recently he gave a video interview and made small donations to the tiny nazi British People's party.

Conforming to far-right tradition, Jordan denounced other British fascist leaders as cowardly or corrupt. He was, meanwhile, hailed by people sharing his inclinations as the godfather of British nazism. He is survived by his partner Julianna Safrany.

John Colin Campbell Jordan, agitator, born 19 June 1923; died 9 April 2009

Guardian

Colin Jordan is Dead...Happy Easter!

Rot in hell you evil Nazi scumbag

John Colin Campbell Jordan (June 1923 - 9 April 2009) was a leading figure in the postwar Far Right in Britain. In the far-right circles of the 1960s, Jordan represented the most explicitly 'Nazi' inclination in his open use of the styles and symbols of the Third Reich.

Through organisations such as the National Socialist Movement and the World Union of National Socialists, Jordan advanced a pan-Aryan "Universal Nazism". Although later unaffiliated with any political party, Jordan remained an influential voice on the British far right at Cambridge.

Jordan had formed a "Nationalist Club", from which he was invited to join the short-lived British Peoples Party, a group of former British Union of Fascists members led by Lord Tavistock, heir to the Duke of Bedford. Jordan soon became associated with Arnold Leese and was left a property in Leese's will, which became the base of operations when Jordan launched the White Defence League in 1956.

Jordan would later merge this party with the National Labour Party to form the British National Party in 1960, although he would split from this after a quarrel with John Bean, who felt that Jordan's open National Socialism was a bar to progress. As a result, he founded the National Socialist Movement (1962, later becoming the British Movement in 1968) along with John Tyndall.

In August 1962, Jordan hosted an international conference of National Socialists in Gloucestershire resulting in the formation of the World Union of National Socialists, of which Jordan was the commander of its European section throughout the 1960s, and at which he was elected "World Fuhrer".

On 16 August, Jordan and Tyndall (amongst others) were charged under the Public Order Act with attempts to set up a paramilitary force called Spearhead.

In the Leyton byelection of 1965 Jordan was punched at a public meeting by Denis Healey, then Secretary of State for Defence. The fracas came about because the far right were using the by-election to stir up inter-racial hatred to defeat the Labour candidate (and Foreign Secretary) Patrick Gordon-Walker. He had already been defeated in the October 1964 general election in the Smethwick constituency after racist campaigning tactics by the successful Conservative candidate, Peter Griffiths.

In October 1963, while John Tyndall was still in prison, Jordan, who had just been released, married Tyndall's fiancée, Françoise Dior, the former wife of a French nobleman and the niece of the French fashion designer Christian Dior. When Tyndall was eventually released, he split with Jordan in 1964 to form the Greater Britain Movement.

Colin Jordan’s political career was brought to an end in 1976, after he was found guilty of stealing a pair of womens’ knickers from Marks and Spencer.

In the 1980s, Jordan revived Gothic Ripples, originally Leese's publication, as his personal mouthpiece.

Jordan maintained ties to groups led by Kevin Watmough, such as the White Nationalist Party and the British Peoples Party as well as the American National Socialist Workers Party.

In 2000, he expressed scepticism over the efforts of the British National Party to soften its hard right stance.Colin Jordan died at his Pateley Bridge home on 9 April 2009.

Kirklees Unity hopes Jordan rots in hell.....save a pitchfork for Griffin

Kirklees Unity

NICK GRIFFIN: profile of a fascist

As we approach the beginning of the Hope not Hate Anti-Fascist Fortnight, we thought we'd pinch the odd useful article from the website to help spread the word. Here's the first, starting at the top with Nick Griffin, fascist and Holocaust-denier.

The British National Party (BNP) leader, Nick Griffin, presents himself as a modern, respectable politician but he is nothing of the sort. For over 30 years he has been a hardline fascist. He denies the Holocaust happened, believes that Jews are conspiring against white British people and even today cavorts with some of the world's most hardline Nazis.

Born in 1959 Nick Griffin comes from a wealthy right-wing family. His father, Edgar was a Conservative party member, involved in Iain Duncan Smith's campaign for election as party leader until he was discovered answering a BNP hotline in the absence of Griffin's mother who had also stood as a BNP candidate against Duncan Smith in during the 2001 general election.

Influenced by British Union of Fascists literature on the "Jewish Question" Griffin attended his first National Front aged 15, though did not officially join the party until he was a student at Downing College, Cambridge, where he studied law gaining a lower second-class degree. He rose quickly through the ranks, becoming the national student organiser in 1978.

In 1980, Griffin launched Nationalism Today, a font of "Third Positionist" fascism, which claimed to transcend the evils of both capitalism and communism. Both ideologies, Griffin claimed, were identical as both concentrated private ownership in very few hands, infringing on the right of independence of nation states and, most fundamentally, being Zionist (that is, Jewish) controlled.

Strange bedfellows

During this period Griffin became influenced by Italian fascist Roberto Fiore, a member of the Italian Third Position who introduced Griffin to the blood and soil philosophy of Italian nazi theorist Julius Evola. Under Griffin the NF embraced Third Position politics. Becoming known as "political soldiers" NF representatives met with Colonel Gaddafi's regime through the Libyan People's Bureau in London, and expressed support for Iran's Ayatollah Khomeini. Griffin and other leading NF figures then took an all-expenses-paid fundraising trip to Libya as guests of the Gaddafi regime.

Expressing his support for Muslim fundamentalism (which the BNP now paradoxically deplores) Griffin wrote in National Front News that "common interest must be turned into practical cooperation" and that he and his colleagues were not afraid "to be seen standing side by side with Third Way nations such as Libya and Iran." Griffin also backed black separatist Louis Farrakhan who likewise called for racial apartheid.

In 1989 Griffin left the NF to form the International Third Position, a small reactionary fascist sect, which campaigned against Coca Cola, McDonald's, urbanisation and "Zionism" (the Jews). Griffin's involvement was not to last.

In 1990 he lost an eye in an accident. In 1991, after a failed business venture, which cost another member several thousand pounds, Griffin went his own way.
Political chameleon

In 1995, Griffin joined the BNP. His personal journal The Rune, an antisemitic quarterly produced by Croydon BNP served as a platform for opposing the "modernisation" of the BNP, accusing those who wanted change of "rainbow Conservatism". He also announced that the BNP should prioritise denying the Holocaust to schoolchildren.

Griffin became editor of Spearhead, the flagship BNP journal in 1996 and set out to take over the party, initially seeking a merger with the National Front. In the process Griffin jettisoned many of his core beliefs - at least publicly. Recognising that the BNP was unelectable with some of its policies, Griffin dropped its commitment to compulsory repatriation - though the small print allows for the option to be considered if not enough people accept their financial offer to return home.

In 1998 Griffin was found guilty of distributing material likely to incite racial hatred and was given a two year suspended sentence.

In 1999 he ousted BNP founder John Tyndall to become BNP chairman. In a bid to emulate the success of groups like the French National Front, with which the BNP has close links, Griffin has deliberately toned down the hardline rhetoric of the "old" BNP in exchange for limited electoral success.

Puzzled by Griffin's apparent conversion to the ballot box his former ITP comrades asked pointedly: "He has been a conservative, a revolutionary nationalist, a radical national Socialist, a Third Positionist, a friend of the 'boot boys' and the skinhead scene, a man committed to respectable politics and electioneering, a 'moderniser'. Which is he in reality?"

Replying to criticism within the far right, Griffin told a private meeting of American nazis and racists that while the BNP needed to change to get elected, his core beliefs - that of the superiority of the white race - remained his driving force.

Out of the glare of the British media Griffin maintains close links with white supremacists and racial scientists who promote spurious racial science. Griffin denied being a racist but is only too happy to consort with leading American extremists including former KKK leaders David Duke and Don Black through forums such as American Renaissance, which seeks to promote the "clear conception of the United States as a nation ruled by and for whites".

Griffin speaks of the need for community-based politics to build respectability for the BNP in the eyes of voters. Yet this is the same Nick Griffin who only a few years before wrote in The Rune that the only "well-directed boots and fists" could back up BNP policies "not of rational debate."

Griffin stood in Oldham in the hope of exploiting race riots during the 2001 general election. He gained 16%. During the 2005 general election Griffin stood in Keighley, West Yorkshire, again trying to exploit racial tensions. He polled 4,240 votes (9.16%).

In 2006 he was charged again with inciting racial hatred after calling Islam "a wicked, vicious faith" and that Muslims were guilty of turning Britain into "a multi-racial hell hole." He was acquitted of all charges, subsequently basking in unheralded publicity, which helped raise the profile of the BNP ahead of the May 2006 local elections.

Griffin is a typical fascist - a man for all people. He is also an outrageous opportunist. There is not a bandwagon or campaign he would not exploit or a political belief he would not jettison if he thought he could benefit.

Griffin the Holocaust denier

Despite Griffin's new moderate image, he remains a Holocaust Denier. He has attacked Holocaust denier David Irving for being too moderate (!) for admitting that some Jews did indeed die during the Holocaust claiming the "True Revisionists will not be fooled by this new twist to the sorry tale of the Hoax of the Twentieth Century." His views on the Holocaust led in 1998 to a conviction for distributing material likely to incite racial hatred. He received a two-year suspended jail sentence.

Griffin remains an ardent Holocaust denier. Even today, he still refuses to accept the Holocaust happened. In 2006 he was quoted in the Mail on Sunday as saying: "It's well known that the chimneys from the gas chambers at Auschwitz are fake, built after the war ended."

On his farm in Wales Griffin has, according to Wales on Sunday, two pigs one called "Anne" and another called "Frank" - a crude anti-Semitic parody of Anne Frank, the young Jewish girl whose wartime diary, written whilst she was in hiding in Amsterdam is a world famous indictment of Nazi persecution of the Jews. Anne Frank was later betrayed and died in a concentration camp. Apparently Griffin thinks this is funny.

Griffin admitted to the Mail on Sunday that the legacy of Hitler gave British Nationalism a bad name, but in the same interview he traces the roots of the BNP back to the 1930s - to the British Union of Fascists who were praised in Griffin's own magazine The Rune during the 1990s.

Griffin the anti-Semite

In 1997 Nick Griffin produced Who are the Mindbenders? Adapted from a US Nazi publication of the same name, it claims to prove that the minds of British people are brainwashed through Jewish control of the media. The booklet includes a list of all known Jews working in the media as though they are working together for a joint cause. He proves Jewish control of the BBC by naming a mere 19 Jews who work for the corporation. He has never repudiated this work.

Griffin in quotes

On the Holocaust

I am well aware that the orthodox opinion is that 6 million Jews were gassed and cremated or turned into lampshades. Orthodox opinion also once held that the earth is flat… I have reached the conclusion that the 'extermination' tale is a mixture of Allied wartime propaganda, extremely profitable lie, and latter-day witch-hysteria."

On Race

Without the White race, nothing matters. [Other right-wing parties] believe that the answer to the race question is integration and a futile attempt to create 'Black Britons', while we affirm that non-Whites have no place here at all and will not rest until every last one has left our land."

On power

When the crunch comes, power is the product of force and will, not of rational debate. We have to have a body of trained young men capable of defending our organisation. If people come to crack our heads we will break theirs."

On Adolf Hitler's Mein Kampf

The chapter I most enjoyed was the one on propaganda and organisation - there were some really useful ideas there."

Hope not Hate Anti-Fascist Fortnight