For Derek Godfrey, the 76-year old National Front district council candidate for Caddington, the week started well. His local NF branch managed to gather together a ragbag of 50 sick notes to shuffle through Hemel Hempstead on St George's Day, topped off by a "secret" social at The Packhorse pub, Markyate, known to local activists as "The Bunker".
After that ,however, it all started to go wrong. Local anti-fascists had been tracking Godfrey for the past two years, drawn by his wild letters to the local press that defended the NF, hailed the memory of Oswald Mosley and defended Prince Harry's right to wear a fancy dress swastika. It came as little surprise, therefore, to see him appear as the NF's local candidate for the May elections.
This prompted another search through the archives, revealing that Godfrey had been an active member of the nazi League of St George in the 1970s. A quick Google search shows him marching at a Diksmuide rally of European national socialists in the mid 1970s. Godfrey told the Luton News "when I saw what it was all about, I packed it in. I thought it was a bit extreme." A "bit nazi" then, ignoring the fact that membership of the League was by invitation only.
Worse still, Godfrey's own election meeting at a school in local school was cancelled when hapless local organiser Simon Deacon failed to show evidence of liability insurance by a Friday noon deadline. Local councillor and school governor Richard Stay said: "I gave them reasonable notice that we needed to have that evidence by midday today - they failed. It's my role to guarantee the protection of staff and children at the school. So, I called the meeting off."
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