Book Review: Gathering Storm: America’s Militia Threat

Morris Dees with James Corcoran (London: HarperCollins 1996).

A few minutes ago this evening I put up a post about an article on Hatewatch, a site by the Southern Poverty Law Centre that monitors extreme right-wing terrorism in the US, about the contacts between British Nazis, such as Thomas Mair, accused of the murder of Jo Cox, other extreme rightists, like Anders Breivik, and the National Alliance, the main Nazi organisation in the US. Twenty years ago, Morris Dees, the chief trial counsel at the Southern Poverty Law Centre, wrote this book about the emergence of the militia movement in the US. These are right-wing paramilitary organisations, which came out of the survivalist movement in the 1980s. Their immediate impetus was the FBI’s killing of the wife and son of Randy Weaver, a right-wing extremist during an attack on his home at Ruby Ridge. The militias included fringe Christian groups, such as Christian identity and the neo-Nazi compounds and organisations at Hayden Lakes. It was the nexus that published the Turner Diaries, written by William Pierce, a Fascist fantasy about a White supremacist rebellion against a future America dominated by ZOG – the Zionist Occupation Government – Jews and Blacks. This was the book that inspired Timothy McVeigh, who bombed the federal building in Oklahoma.

These were and are armed groups that believed that America was run by a secret Jewish government intent on enslaving gentiles and determined to destroy the White race through racial interbreeding with Blacks. Flicking through the book again, I found a photo of Col. ‘Bo’ Gritz. Gritz claimed to be the real person on which Rambo was based, and for years supposedly toured Vietnam looking for missing American soldiers still kept in prison camps after the War. Apart from his paramilitary activities, Gritz also had some very strange metaphysical views. He turns up in one of the pieces by Adam Palfrey, collected in Cult Rapture and Apocalypse Culture, in which he is interviewed after a meeting with a little old lady, who was one of the New Age channellers, who appeared in the ’80s and ’90s. Most Channellers seemed to have been essentially decent types, offering fairly banal warnings about the importance of love, peace, spiritual values and the need to save the planet from a various cast of interplanetary aliens and Ascended Masters. Unfortunately, the interstellar authority this one channelled was Hathon. He was a 9 1/2 foot tall reptilian from the Pleiades and a Nazi, who told people that there really was an international Jewish conspiracy and UFOs were a Nazi secret weapon. It’s the kind of stuff Nicholas Goodrick-Clarke describes in his book on modern Neo-Nazi pagan cults, The Black Sun.

At the time, there was a real fear that the Militias would try to organise some kind of coup, or at least begin a wave of extreme right-wing terror. Those fears largely haven’t materialised. One demented woman, who claimed to be a militia commander, tried to organise the Militias to form a mass march on Washington, but this never got off the ground as most of them suspected her of being a federal agent provocateur. And not all of them were racist. The commander of one of the Militias was Black, and there was a Jewish Militia, whose members believed that Jews should arm themselves against the possibility of a renewed Holocaust. Nevertheless, extreme rightwing terrorism is still very much a threat in America. In contradiction to the impression you get from the media, there’s more terrorism by White Supremacist and Neo-Nazis in America than from the Islamists. This is part of the milieu that’s produced the extreme right-wing radio hosts, who tell their listeners that America is in the hands of an atheist/ Communist/ Nazi/ Muslim conspiracy to kill good patriotic Christian Americans. The type of people, who blithely state over the airwaves that Obama is going to kill more people than Pol Pot. They’re part of the same milieu that has produced the Nazi supporters of Donald Trump, and that may be their most lasting and pernicious legacy to American politics.

Hatewatch on the Links between the American National Alliance and British Neo-Nazis

Thomas Mair, the suspect for the murder of the Labour politician Jo Cox, was a long-time members of the extreme Right, who had ordered about $600 worth of books on how to build home-made guns and ammunition from National Vanguard Books, the publishing arm of the National Alliance, the main American neo-Nazi organisation.

Michelle, one of the many great contributors to this blog, sent me this link to an article on Hatewatch, the magazine of the Southern Poverty Law Centre that documents the activities of right-wing extremists: https://www.splcenter.org/hatewatch/2016/06/21/thomas-mair-brexit-and-us-uk-neo-nazi-connection. The Southern Poverty Law Centre has been around for decades. In the 1990s its leader, Maurice Dees, published a book on the threat of the Militias, independent, private armies of right-wing survivalists, bitterly alienated from the federal government, entitled Gathering Storm. The above article by Heidi Beirich, their intelligence director, describes the links to the National Alliance and other American Nazi organisations not just of Thomas Mair, but also Zack Davies, who carried out a brutal attack on a Sikh doctor in Mold in North Wales; Mark Cotterill, a former BNP member, who recruits for the National Alliance in Britain through his Heritage and Destiny website, Andrew Lovie, a former member of UKIP, and BNP stormtrooper, who has posted on the neo-Nazi website, Stormfront, in America. Among merchandising Lovie ordered from the National Alliance was a video game, ‘Ethnic Cleansing’, where the player goes around shooting Blacks and Jews. As grotesque and incredible as this sounds, it is all too plausible. When I was at College thirty years ago, the German Republican Party had got into the news and very hot water because of a computer game they launched, in which the player took the part of a the commandant of a concentration camp and had to prevent Jews, gays and leftists escaping. The article also describes the activities of two Brexit advocates, Andrew Tait and Matthew Tait, and Arthur Kemp. Andrew Tait ran a pro-Brexit website, ‘Vote Leave Take Control’, while Matthew Tait was a former BNP activist, who has spoken several times at conferences by American Renaissance, a racist outfit on the other side of the Pond. Tait also has his own website, Western Spring, in which he posted a pro-Brexit piece arguing that the EU was a Communist organisation to destroy the White race. Kemp’s a racist South African, who was a former officer of the BNP, and was at one time the media director of the National Alliance. Kemp also has a racist website, the New Observer Online, in which he calls immigrants ‘invaders’ and ‘rapefugees’.

Other Nazi assassins elsewhere in Europe also have contacts with American Nazi organisations. These include Anders Breivik, who was a member of Stormfront, Peter Mangs, another National Alliance member, who killed three people in Sweden, and Maxime Brunerie, a French Fascist, who tried to kill the-then president, Jacques Chirac. David Copeland, the infamous Nazi, who killed a number of people in a bombing campaign in London targeting gays, Blacks and Asians, was partly inspired by the Turner Diaries, a work of fiction describing a future extreme-right coup in America, sold by the National Alliance. And then there’s Frank S., a German skinhead, who stabbed Henriette Reker, a mayoral candidate for Cologne. He also was active online. The current Chairman of the National Alliance, Will Williams, is also living on welfare due to psychological problems, and has a history of victimising women. He celebrated the death of Jo Cox, stating that she had placed a target on her back.

Politically, the membership of extreme right-wing organisations in Britain is very low, but they are extremely violent, and as this article shows, several of the most vicious have transatlantic contacts. And there is a real danger that this violence will be spread and encouraged by Brexit. As one of my brother’s foreign friends has found, the amount of racism has increased and become very personal.

Vox Political: Thomas Mair due to be Tried for Terrorism in November

Mike over at Vox Political has also put up this piece, reporting that Thomas Mair has appeared before Mr Justice Saunders at the Old Bailey via video link. Mair is accused of murdering the MP, Jo Cox, last Thursday. The date of his trial is set as 14th November, and he has been charged with terrorism. At least this time he has had the decency to give a proper answer when asked what his name was. When he appeared before the beak last week, he claimed it was ‘Death to Traitors, Freedom for Britain’.

See Mike’s article at: http://voxpoliticalonline.com/2016/06/23/terrorist-trial-of-thomas-mair-to-take-place-in-november/

Now it’s important to remember that Mair is innocent until proven guilty. But the evidence against him seems very conclusive. That hasn’t stopped the Kippers, Brexiters and other members of the racist right from trying to claim that he is somehow innocent. Hope Not Hate and other bloggers and organisations, include Vox Political, have reported and commented on the stupid conspiracy theories that sprung up like poisonous mushrooms after Cox’s murder. According to these, it wasn’t Mair, but a false flag operation to muster support from the Remain camp. This was according to Francois Asselineau, a conspiracy theorist with form for this kind of stupid, right-wing pronouncements over in La Patrie across the Channel. The man, who actually saw him carrying out the attack has an Arab name, and so was derided as a ‘lying Muslim’. Actually, in his clothes, demeanour and accent the witness looked as Yorkshire and British as anybody else. Not that it should have made any difference if he had worn a kaftan, skull cap and traditional Asian trousers.

I’ve also been amazed at the attempts to blame the attack on Mair’s poor mental health, rather than his membership of extreme right-wing organisations, like the pro-Apartheid Springbok club, the London Swinton Circle, and contacts with the National Alliance, the main American Nazi organisation. Instead it’s because he suffered from depression, or OCD -Obsessive Compulsive Disorder. It’s not a convincing excuse, and neither of those conditions, on their own, will provoke someone to murder.

Let’s take depression. I think Mike put up a piece yesterday from a neuroscientist, who said that in her medical experience, depressives don’t have the energy to murder anyone. The unfortunates who suffer from the condition have all the energy drained out of them. That’s true. I’ve come across people with the condition, who have done nothing but lie in a darkened room when they’ve been suffering from an attack. Many depressives, and obsessive-compulsives, for that matter, simply take to sleep to try and get away from the thoughts and ruminations that are troubling them. They neither have the energy nor inclination for violence.

As for Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder, many of those who suffer from it, don’t do anything but feel forced to carry out repetitive rituals, such as washing themselves over and over again, in case something terrible might happen. At their most severe, these rituals can take up someone’s entire day, and affect not just their lives, but the lives of their families. But people, who spend hours checking to make sure they’ve properly locked the doors and windows, despite knowing that they have, don’t usually entertain thoughts of killing anyone.

Of course, part of the illness is that thoughts that cause anxiety may be dwelt upon, and for those hostile to immigration, that will include thoughts about the threat posed by immigrants. Now I think it’s fair to say that there is a danger of this, not just because of the emotive nature of the immigration debate, but also because of the genuine threat of Islamist terrorism. But again, having those thoughts doesn’t necessarily mean you have to act them out. If someone is so ill with depression and anxiety, that they seek medical help, then they know they’re ill. Which means that they can also recognise that their anxieties and the terrible ideas and fears running through their minds don’t necessarily correspond to reality. One antidote to fears about immigrants and immigration is simply thinking about the many decent people, who’ve come to this country over its history. Simply taking a trip on the bus, where you can see ordinary people of all races and backgrounds talking about banal, everyday matters like the weather, problems with the car and the awful track, what a prat the boss is, the cost of living and the footie, should help to allay any fears that Blacks or Asians are terrible monsters threatening the White race.

And backing this up is the knowledge of how vile the real Nazis are. As shown by the Holocaust, which is enough to depress and strike fear into anybody. But you don’t even have to go that far. Just the ordinary thuggery of the NF is sufficient for most people. Some of the Conservative politicians, who initially supported the National Front in the 1970s dropped them when they realised just what a violent outfit the NF was, and especially its policy of recruiting football hooligans and bootboys to attack non-Whites and left-wingers.

Mair doesn’t seem to have done any of this. He doesn’t seem to have tried to challenge his own racism by dwelling on the horrors of the concentration camps, or the unremarkable decency of ordinary folk. Nor was he determined by the far-right’s violence. In fact, his purchase of $600 worth of books on how manufacture home-made guns and ammunition from the publishing branch of the National Alliance, shows he was all too prepared to be involved with it.

Mental illness alone didn’t motivate Mair to kill Jo Cox, if indeed it was him. Sheer, vicious racism and a bitter hatred of those he considered ‘race traitors’ did.

The Nazi Murder of Jo Cox MP

It’s been a week for murder by extreme right-wing nutters. On Monday the world was shocked by the news that a gunman, Omar Mateen, had opened fire in Pulse, a gay nightclub in Orlando, Florida. Before he was killed in turn by armed police, he had killed 49 people and wounded another 50.

Then on Thursday another maniac, Thomas Mair, shot to death Jo Cox, the Labour MP for Batley and Spen. Cox had just been holding a surgery, meeting her constituents in a library in Birstall, a village in Yorkshire. She was outside the library when Thomas Mair shot her twice, first in the face, and then on the ground, before stabbing her. Mair was tackled by a very brave local man. A witness, Hitham ben Abdullah, said the gun looked homemade. Before Mair attacked her, he was heard shouting ‘Britain First’, or ‘You don’t put Britain first’, either in reference to the Referendum – Cox was a supporter of the Remain team – or the British Nazi group of the same name.

Britain First’s initial reaction was to deny they had any connection to Mair and the murder. Others on the extreme right were all too eager to express their sympathies for the murderer’s actions. Daniel Hall, a member of the Notts Casuals Infidels, from Sutton in Ashfield, posted on their Facebook page that ‘We knew it was only a matter of time before we took it to the next level. We have been mugged off of for far too long.’ Hall is the brother of Jordan, a Kipper and an activist for Pegida. The Notts Casuals Infidels are a mixture of the EDL and the North West Infidels, another anti-Islam group. He also said that another politician, Rachel Maskell, the MP for York Central, needed to ‘disappear’. And the South East Infidels greeted the shocking news of Cox’s murder with a post on Facebook hoping that the murderer was a Muslim.

See the article in Hope Not Hate http://www.hopenothate.org.uk/blog/insider/in-an-hour-of-darkness-fascists-live-out-sick-their-fantasies-4918.

Nick Griffin, now sponging off eastern European Nazis after he was ousted from the BNP, attacked Cox as a warmonger for supporting the bombing of Syria. And the north east branch of the Nazi group, National Action put up a post urging its readers ‘Don’t let this man’s [Mair’s] sacrifice be in vain. Jo Cox would have filled Yorkshire with more subhumans!’

Mair himself had a long history of mental illness. However, it seems he was also a very committed member of the Nazi right. From the late 1990s to the early years of this century he purchased $600 worth of books from National Vanguard Books, the publishing arm of the National Alliance, America’s and the world’s biggest neo-Nazi organisation. The books he bought were manuals showing how guns and ammunition could be made from ordinary ingredients and parts bought in hardware stores. Mair appears to have been very much a peripheral figure in the extreme Far-Right. At one time he attended the meetings of the Springbok Club, a society for pro-Apartheid expatriate White South Africans, and may have gone to the meetings of the ultra-Conservative Swinton Circle/ London Swinton Circle.

As for Britain First, while they’ve disowned him, they did run camps instructing their members how to defend themselves in knife fights, and promised ‘militant action’ and ‘direct action’, against elected Muslim politicians, whom they regard as ‘occupiers’, leading the Islamification of Britain. One of these ‘occupiers’ is the new mayor of London, Sadiq Khan. On the night of her election, Cox was shown with a shawl round her head in the company of some of her Muslim constituents. This would have sent Britain First and similar Nazis into apoplexy, as they would have seen her as a collaborator and ‘race traitor’.
See the Hope Not Hate article: http://www.hopenothate.org.uk/blog/insider/a-hater-at-heart-4919
This also makes sense of an comment a ‘John Gaines’ posted over on Mike’s blog at Vox Political, which ran ‘Here we go, what have you Political imbeciles done to our Country? you scum will not stop until we are completely another damn Middle East mess. Never mind ‘Remain’ run for your lives from all political idiots.’ Which shows what a political idiot Mr Gaines is.
See http://voxpoliticalonline.com/2016/06/16/mp-critically-injured-after-shooting-and-stabbing-attack/#comments.

Despite the cruddy attitude from the Far Right, which you’d expect, MPs and the leaders of all the mainstream parties expressed their shock and sadness at Cox’s death. Referendum campaigning has been suspended, and the other parties will not contest Jo Cox’s seat.

Cox was a woman of deep integrity and compassion, by all accounts. She was dedicated not just to her constituents, but had also been an active member of Oxfam. She should have had a brilliant political career ahead of her. Instead she was murdered in cold blood in the street by a maniac. She leaves a husband and two children.

A Memoir of a Brutal Life in British Fascism

Matthew Collins, Hate: My Life in the British Far Right (London: Biteback Publishing 2011). With a foreword by Billy Bragg.

This is a grim book about grim people. Extremely grim and unpleasant people. The kind of people Norman Stanley Fletcher, the balladeer of H.M. Prison Slade, used to describe as ‘charmless nerks’. Collins is a writer and researcher for the anti-Fascist magazine, Searchlight. The blurb on the back describes him as the organisation’s Northern Ireland correspondent, and states that he is noted for his work exposing the English Defence League. Before he joined Searchlight, he was a committed member of the Far Right. This is his account of his passage through the various British Fascist parties and their allies – the NF, the BNP, Combat 18 and the UDA, before disgust at their leadership and extreme brutality led him to contact Searchlight. His part in exposing a still unnamed Sun journalist as an NF member and a World In Action documentary into Combat 18, supplying arms to the UDA, eventually forced him to flee England for Australia. He spent 10 years in Oz, enjoying a life of carefree pleasure, meaningless sex, and marriage, before finally returning to Blighty to continue the struggle.

Unlike other, more academic books, which analyse the NF, BNP and related Fascist organisations from the perspective of their ideologies, electoral performance and demographic composition of their membership, Collins autobiographical account describes what life in the Far Right is actually like for the rank-and-file members. These are the storm troopers, who spend their weekends travelling across Britain to parade on marches, attend speeches and rallies, and get extremely drunk, threaten and beat up ‘Reds’, Blacks, Asians, gays, and just about anyone and everyone they don’t like. Which really could be anyone and everyone. There’s a description in the book of how the NF’s storm troopers trashed a pub during a weekend away in Brighton, simply because one of the barmaids objected to one of the skinhead thugs attempting to grab the phone from her hand and demanding that she call him a taxi. Collins makes it extremely clear that these are extremely violent, brutal men.

The ‘Political Soldier’ NF

Collins joined after the NF had split into two factions. One of these, led by Griffin, was the ‘Political Soldier’ movement, This took its inspiration from Roberto Fiore and other terrorists from the Italian Forza Nuova. They were attempting to stem the drift away from Fascism under Thatcher by developing new ideological strands, some of which were more left-wing. They took over elements from Colonel Gaddafi’s Libya and revolutionary Iran. Some aspects of these new ideologies were more left-wing than the NF’s usual stance. For example, during the Miners’ Strike one faction within the NF offered help to the strikers, which Scargill obviously declined. The rank-and-file members weren’t interested in this. Collins says they had no interest in going to a remote farmhouse to answer detailed questions on their personal political and religious convictions. They are really interested in getting drunk and beating someone to a pulp.

Fascism and Political Violence

And the violence is very, very brutal. Far more brutal than the gang fights kids get into a school. It takes no account of age or gender, and continues even when the victim is on the floor. These are people, who by and large think nothing of maiming and ultimately killing their victims. Collins describes how deeply ashamed he was at taking part in a BNP attack on an anti-Fascist meeting at Welling Library, during which 17 people were hospitalised. Nearly all of these were women. Most of them were Asians, worried about the safety of their children in an area with so much racist violence against them. One of the intended victims was pregnant, and locked herself in the ladies’ loos for safety, while the men outside tried to get in to attack her and her unborn child. On their way in, they punched Geoffrey Dixon, the Labour councillor for Greenwich and the caretaker to the floor, and then stamped on them. Collins states that the caretaker never worked again. Some of the victims were so terrified that they jumped from the windows – the meeting was held on the first floor – to escape. Collins states that he and one of the other storm troopers were the only ones to hit men during the assault, which even sickened the other Fascist. Collins himself was so shocked and disgusted that he left and rejoined the NF for a while. Later on Collins tells how the BNP and its supporting football hooligans attacked the Liberal candidate for Bermondsey, Simon Hughes, in his battle bus.

Fascist Violence and Intimidation at University Meeting

And Fascists behave no better when in an academic environment. Collins describes the atmosphere of threat, intimidation and abuse produced by the BNP when they organised an event at which David Irving, the notorious holocaust denier, spoke. Collins does not give the name of the institution, which hosted the meeting, but states that it was held – incredibly – in the International Students’ House. The BNP stewarding the event effectively take over the library, at one point stopping the terrified students from leaving, then allowing them to come and go as they wish, but under their supervision. Seeing a group from anti-Fascist Action outside the window, the Nazis immediately begin to make ape noises and shout challenges and anti-Semitic abuse. They also generally behave as drunken louts, indecently exposing themselves, tearing books off shelves, and intruding into small, private discussion groups. A few tried to pick up two African girls, while another tried to press his unwelcome attentions on a blonde woman, who shut herself in her office, leaving the offended Nazi banging on the door and loudly declaring his love and sexual intentions outside. Collins describes it as like a prison riot.

This description of the loutish antics of the BNP, even in an academic environment, is important. In the 1980s a number of branches of the Students’ Union passed rules stating that the Union was a ‘no platform for racists and Fascists’. It’s a controversial decision, as some, who are definitely not Fascists or Fascist sympathisers, feel that it’s anti-democratic. There was also obviously enormous controversy when the Oxford Union back in the 1990s invited Irving to speak. Collins description of this episode and the aggressive, threatening and generally disgusting behaviour by the BNP actually shows you how wise the Anti-Fascist groups are to try and keep them off campus, if only to protect the students themselves, regardless of any wider political issues.

Fascists Personally Sad Inadequates

There’s a danger in that describing violence, whether by Fascists or any other group of thugs, can also glamorise it, making it appear attractive, even admirable. Collins avoids this. He makes it very clear how brutal and unpleasant it actually is, how ashamed he is of his part in it, and how sad and pathetic the men involved actually are. Pathetic? Yes, really. He states that by and large, the members of the Far Right are so unattractive to the opposite gender that they have actually little chance of getting girlfriends or having any kind of sex life. Collins does seem to have had a string of extremely short-term relationships, but they mostly never called him back. He mostly solved his own problems in finding female company through amassing a collection of porn and self-abuse. When he did finally succeed in getting what looked like a long-term relationship, the girl left him because she couldn’t take his involvement in Fascism and its dangers any longer. He is particularly scathing about the sexual inadequacies of his fellow Fascists, and their lack of physical endowment. It’s low stuff, but it makes them unattractive at the level such groups aim at. You consider the way violent criminals, like East End White gangsters, and gangsta rappers, are often portrayed surrounded by attractive young women. The message of those images is that if you were similarly a vicious hard man, you too will have girls flinging themselves at you. Collins here shows that in the case of Fascism, this very definitely will not happen. The only people within the Fascist milieu that have any kind of sex life are the skinheads, and he’s not impressed with them. He sees them as quite squalid individuals, fathering children with three or four different women, who in turn have other kids by three or four different fathers. The men just seem to use them purely for sex, and he describes the skinhead girls as going from one meaningless, squalid relationship to another with a mattress tied to their backs.

NF’s Ian Anderson More Basil Fawlty than Hitler

Some of the Fascist leaders are also less than impressive up close. Collins describes Ian Anderson, the leader of the NF faction he joined, as a rather Fawlty-esque figure. Anderson had a vicious temper, flying into abusive rages whenever anything went wrong, to the point where Collins calls him ‘Angry Anderson’. An Oxford drop out, Anderson was physically scruffy and his house a mess. Collins describes him wearing worn, threadbare suits. His living room floor was covered with newspapers and other rubbish. His furniture was similarly worn and threadbare. His settee had no seat, so that if you sat on it, you were effectively sitting on the floor. At one point the house is such a mess that the other leading storm troopers don’t want to go there for meetings.

Anderson was trying to lead his faction of the NF away from anti-Semitism in an attempt to make it more electorally respectable. Collins states that some of his fellow storm troopers shared his views. One of his friends told him that while they hated non-Whites, they really didn’t understand the hatred of the Jews. This policy was not having much success, however, and Anderson’s NF were losing members fast due to competition from the much more aggressive and overtly Nazi BNP, led by Richard Edmonds and Tyndall. Collins and many of the other members were left dispirited and disillusioned by Anderson’s leadership. Turnout at parades and marches were tiny often as low as thirty. Towards the end of that section of the NF, they were reaching as low as perhaps ten or twelve. Anderson himself also seemed to regard the NF as a business, to provide him with a personal income, at one point asking the party’s governing body to give him £8,000. Even here, his management was not very business-like. Orders and correspondence went unread, and cheques weren’t cashed or paid in. Faced with this venality and incompetence, Collins and many others left to join the BNP.

BNP Nazi, Viciously Anti-Semitic

These were overtly, aggressively Nazi. Not only did their literature deny the reality of the Holocaust, but its members also looked forward to a similar policy of racial extermination. Collins states that when he was in there, although in his calmer moments he wanted a bloodless, painful removal of Jews and non-Whites from Britain, he also dreamed of sending them ‘to the East’, as the Nazis deported the Jews and their other victims to the concentration camps. The BNP also had links to surviving Nazis and members of Mosley’s BUF. He describes the chaos and violence at the Kensington Library meeting, which ultimately led to the formation of the extremely violent Combat 18. This was a meeting of the League of St. George, whose doorman was dressed in full Nazi regalia. This was gatecrashed by Searchlight’s Gerry Gable and a squad of about fifty anti-Fascists. Despite Gable’s appeal for calm, the meeting degenerated into violence and the Nazis were given a vicious beating.

Origins of Combat 18

Combat 18’s origins are murky, and there is considerable evidence of state involvement. Charlie Sargent, its founder, whom Collins describes as ‘an overweight, knife-carrying, drug-peddling lout’, was later revealed to be a police informer. Harold Covington, who was also involved in its foundation, may also have been connected to the American intelligence services. I have seen the accusation that Combat 18 was set up the FBI to act as a honey trap for the Far Right. Collins mentions him, but only to say that he was small fry compared to William Pierce, the writer of the notorious Turner Diaries, and the US National Alliance. Covington was also unpalatable to many British Nazis because of his support for the IRA and connections to American Nazi IRA supporters, like Sean Maguire.

BNP Connections to Ulster Protestant Terror Groups

Far more acceptable to British Nazis was the UDA, and Collins describes how he and another BNP member, Eddie Whicker, answered the UDA’s request for British members to provide them with support. The BNP and its members were later revealed by World In Action attempting to supply them with guns. Collins himself appears to have been less than impressed with them. He states that their magazine, Ulster, was full of tradition and history, but had very little in the way of ideology. The UDA seemed actually not to know what it is they stood for, except that they didn’t want to be governed by Ireland or indeed anybody else. They were also poorly armed and equipped compared to the IRA. And while they were desperate for British Fascist support, they were less keen on their racism. One issue of Ulster contained an order for attacks on Chinese restaurateurs in the Six Counties to stop. This, however, seems to have been rejected in recent years, as there has apparently been a rise in racist attacks by Ulster Loyalists, disenchanted with the Good Friday agreement. In addition to attacking Leftists, Blacks, Asians and gays, the NF and BNP also laid into Irish Republicans and the ‘Troops Out’ movement when they organised their marches.

Hooligans and Political Use of violence

Taking part and supporting the Fascists in their violence were an assortment of football hooligans. These include various casuals, as well as hardened hooligan ‘firms’ like the Nutty Turn Out, and, of course, Millwall. The NF and BNP journey up and down the country in their campaigns, including the northern industrial towns where they attempt to intimidate the local Black and Asian populations. Much of the campaigning and violence takes place in the East End of London and Brick Lane, which has a long tradition of racist violence and resistance to racists since Mosley and his squadristi in the 1930s. Zadie Smith describes the racist violence in the area, and a fictional Asian group, the Bengal Tigers, set up to fight back against the Nazis, in her novel, Brick Lane. Collins also goes into the various motives the NF and BNP have for campaigning. He and many other Fascists had absolute contempt for parliament and democracy, and due to their repeated electoral failures many of them saw standing in elections as a waste of time. Their real focus was on expanding Nazi power through control of the streets. Nevertheless, standing in elections acted as a recruiting tool. They also regarded it as an instrument through which they could make race relations worse, and drum up even more hatred. This should be borne in mind the next time the BNP or any other Far Right group puts forward candidates at an election. They have no intention of making things better for society, only in creating further discord and violence. As for the Derek Beackon and the other NF members, who became the first elected BNP local councillors in Tower Hamlets, Collins states that when he met him was always drunk. He is also immensely proud of the way he and Searchlight managed to have all but two of the seven storm troopers lose their seats at the next elections.

Recruitment through Racial Tensions Created by ‘Satanic Verses’ Controversy

Collins also provides insight into the way the BNP and NF exploited racial tension created by Muslim outrage at Rushdie’s Satanic Verses. He states that for the Far Right, it was simply a case of attacking Asians as usual. However, it allowed them to gain support from Whites frightened by the rise in Muslim assertiveness and aggression.

Conservatives and the Fascist Right

Also linked to the NF and the BNP were extreme Right-wing Tories, such as Western Gaols. Collins describes attending the meeting at the Sudeley Room at House of Lords, where the meeting was addressed by the South African Conservative MP, Clive Derby-Lewis. Later on, as his disenchantment with Fascism increases, another Tory, Adrian Davies, invites him to join the Conservatives and acts as his alibi when he is forced to hide out in Spain for a week, following his exposure of the Sun journalist as a Nazi.

Background of Fascist Members and Supporters

Collins book is also important in that it provides an insight into the background and type of men drawn to the NF. Collins’ father was Irish, though Collins himself didn’t realise this for much of his childhood, and it didn’t matter much to him after he found out. Unsuited to married life, his father gradually became more and more distant from his family until the marriage broke down completely and he left. His family were poor working class, and Collins was a poor, underperforming pupil at school. A remark from his father that if he was Roman Catholic, there’d be no Blacks at his school, and thinking about his family poverty and deprivation led him to conclude, as undoubtedly so many angry poor Whites did, that it was caused by Black and Asians.

His family were also Tories, who read the Daily Mail, watched Jim Davidson, and he fully supported Thatcher’s attack on the miners and Norman Tebbit’s demand that the unemployed should get on their bikes. This anger and alienation led him first to argue with the Leftist teachers at his school, and to borrow books on modern Fascism from the school library. He then moved on to actively looking for literature and trying to join the NF. A copy of British Nationalist pushed through the front door allowed him to make contact with the Richard Edmonds, the BNP’s leader. A meeting with five members of the NF in the local pub impressed him with how normal they were, and their stories about Richard Edmonds led him to join the NF. In the event, he and a number of others ended up in both organisations, with Edmonds and Anderson each asking him to spy on the other’s party. Collins joined when he was very young – only 15 – in 1987, and spent six years in the organisation before being forced to flee the country to escape them when he was 21.

Growth of Fascism and New Labour’s Abandonment of Working Class

He states in the book that part of the rise in the Far Right was due to New Labour’s turn away from the working class. There is also jealousy and resentment at the way Black and Asian culture was celebrated and encouraged, while White working class culture was given no such assistance and enjoyed no similar amenities. These are important points. Owen Jones in the chapter ‘Backlash’ in Chavs argues that New Labour’s abandonment of the White working class for the middle class, and its celebration of Black and Asian culture, although entirely right, has also led many working class Whites to feel abandoned and resentful of the supposed privileges of non-Whites.

This is now extremely important, with the victory in the European elections of extreme Right-wing, populist parties like UKIP and the French Front National. UKIP is anti-immigrant, but has a policy of weeding out Fascists, although it does seem to have an incredible amount of them. Its members are, however, mainly older, working class people, who feel that the established parties, particularly New Labour, have abandoned them.

The book does provide a fascinating insight into what life in the Far Right is actually like for the average storm trooper, as well as giving Collins account of how he became so disgusted with them that he ended up not only working for Searchlight and then Special Branch, the latter not entirely willingly. There are problems, however. As a member of Searchlight, Collins is of course biased in their favour. While they have done a great deal of good in exposing the Far Right and its activities, other anti-Fascists have complained that Gable and Searchlight have smeared them and accused of being Fascists when they have pursued their own investigations independently. They have also accused it of appropriating their work, when this has subsequently been proven to be the more correct. See, for example, Matthew Kalman and John Murray’s article about the smears directed at them and Larry O’Hara, ‘Another Searchlight Smear Job’, in Lobster 30: 26-7. O’Hara has similarly attacked the World In Action documentary on the Far Right for its inaccuracies. Nevertheless, it’s still an important, gripping book for its personal account of the British Far Right during the late ’80s and early ’90s, its connections and the personal lives and motivations of its members.