The British Movement (BM), later called the British National Socialist Movement (BNSM), is a British neo-Nazi organisation founded by Colin Jordan in 1968. It grew out of the National Socialist Movement (NSM), which was founded in 1962. Frequently on the margins of the British far-right, the BM has had a long and chequered history for its association with violence and extremism. It was founded as a political party but manifested itself more as a pressure and activist group. It has had spells of dormancy.
Formation The NSM had come to an end sometime after Colin Jordan was imprisoned in early 1967 for distributing a racist leaflet The Coloured Invasion and following his release Jordan had met John Tyndall in Denis Pirie's house about the possibility of joining the National Front.Martin Walker, The National Front, Glasgow: Fontana, 1977, p. 77. These talks came to nothing however and with the Race Relations Act 1968 passed the notion of openly parading Nazi credentials in a party name had to be abandoned, leading to Jordan forming a new group to known as the British Movement.R. Hill & A. Bell, The Other Face of Terror - Inside Europe’s Neo-Nazi Network, London: Collins, 1988, p. 116. Whilst the new party intended to continue the old group's role of being Nazi apologists and endorsing anti-Semitism it aimed to do so within the restrictions brought in by the newly enacted law.Hill & Bell, The Other Face of Terror, p. 117.
Violence
Not long after its formation the BM gained news coverage in Leicester, where a growing Midlands branch was being organised by Ray Hill, when local members attacked students who were supporting an Anti-Apartheid Movement protest against a South African trade delegation visiting the city.Hill & Bell, The Other Face of Terror, p. 36. Direct action activities such as this, which usually ended in violence, became the stock in trade of the BM during its early days. An underground cell, the National Socialist Group, was also established in Blackheath by David Courtney and this undertook paramilitary training exercises in Scotland whilst also seeking to build links between the BM and like-minded groups in Europe. The group vanished suddenly in 1969 when Special Branch began to investigate them, with Courtney in particular dropping out of the far-right scene for some time afterwards.Hill & Bell, The Other Face of Terror, pp. 117–118.
Despite this setback, violence remained on the agenda as the party maintained a "Leader Guard" of violent members whom it encouraged to join the Territorial Army, as well as a Women's Division and a National Youth Movement.Peter Barberis, John McHugh, Mike Tyldesley, Encyclopedia of British and Irish Political Organizations, 2002, p. 177. Members of the BM also took part in paramilitary training exercises in Germany.Geoffrey Harris, The Dark Side of Europe: The Extreme Right Today, Edinburgh University Press, 1994, p. 123. One of the BM's fiercest street fighters, Nicky Crane, led and organised several violent attacks by the BM on non-whites. Following a BM meeting in May 1978, Nicky Crane and other BM members took part in an assault on a black family at a bus stop in Bishopsgate, east London using broken bottles. In 1979, Crane and BM members were part of 200-strong skinhead mob that attacked Asians on Brick Lane, east London. Crane also led and instigated the Woolwich Odeon attack of 1980. After their intended victims ran inside the Odeon cinema to escape attack, Crane and BM members started smashing windows and doors. One Pakistani man was knocked unconscious.
Convictions were not uncommon. Crane was jailed in 1981 for his part in an ambush on black youths at Woolwich Arsenal station. An Old Bailey judge described Crane as "worse than an animal" after his part in the May 1978 bus stop attack in Bishopsgate. Other BM members felt the force of the law as was the case in January 1981 when three members, Rod Roberts, Harvey Stock and Robert Giles, were arrested for possession of illegal weapons and attempted arson with Roberts imprisoned for seven years as a result.Hill & Bell, The Other Face of Terror, pp. 141–142.
Political activity
The BM entered electoral politics in 1969 when Jordan put himself forward as a candidate for the Birmingham Ladywood by-election. The campaign made no attempts to hide the party's support for Nazism and violence became the hallmark, not least on the election night itself when scuffles at the count were televised nationally.Hill & Bell, The Other Face of Terror, p. 37. The 3.5% vote share that the BM secured was treated as a success by activists who felt that it proved that even with a Nazi message nearly 300 people were still prepared to vote for an anti-immigration candidate.Hill & Bell, The Other Face of Terror, pp. 37–38. Indeed, the BM members had openly worn the German Nazi Swastika symbol, and party literature featured pictures of Nazi leader Adolf Hitler.Hill & Bell, The Other Face of Terror, p. 38.
The BM contested the UK general elections in 1970 and in February 1974. The party failed to attract much support in those elections due to its openness about its support for Nazism, and because most of the far right vote went to the National Front (NF). The group's highest result was the 2.5% share which Jordan captured in Birmingham Aston in 1970.S. Taylor, The National Front in English Politics, London: Macmillan, 1982, p. 22. Nonetheless, contact between the BM and NF was not infrequent and in early 1972 John Tyndall had met with Jordan and discussed the possibility that the BM might form the basis of a new NF group in the Midlands, an area of BM strength and NF weakness. The proposal was soon dropped however and was largely made only because Tyndall was seeking to build a power-base in his attempts to replace John O'Brien as NF chairman.Martin Walker, The National Front, Glasgow: Fontana, 1977, p. 134. For his part, Jordan had a long-held ambition to unite the divided far-right and he personally oversaw the production of a BM leaflet, Nationalist Solidarity in '70, in which he called for personal disagreements to be set aside in favour of presenting a united front.Hill & Bell, The Other Face of Terror, pp. 135–136. There were occasional examples of individuals holding simultaneous membership of the BM and NF, although they were not linked at any official level.Michael Billig, A Social Psychological View of the National Front, Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1978, p. 239.
Jordan's run as leader came to an end in 1975 when he was arrested in the Coventry branch of Tesco on a charge of shoplifting. Jordan declared that the event, and the reports that the item he had stolen were a pair of women's knickers, was a frame-up, but soon after he resigned as leader of the BM to take on an advisory role.Hill & Bell, The Other Face of Terror, pp. 119–120.
Post-Jordan After Jordan stood down as leader of the BM, Michael McLaughlin, a former milkman from Liverpool, became the leader.R. Hill & A. Bell, The Other Face of Terror, p. 124. McLaughlin, who was seen as a talented organiser but weak leader, was largely believed to have been chosen as little more than a "front" leader who could be controlled by Jordan from behind the scenes.R. Hill & A. Bell, The Other Face of Terror, p. 120. McLaughlin quickly rejected this notion and made it clear that Jordan's time was over, resulting in the former leader retiring to Yorkshire from where he still published his own journal Gothic Ripples from time to time, the pages of which were regularly filled with criticism of McLaughlin.
McLaughlin, in contrast to Jordan, was under no delusions that the BM might gain a broad following and instead he felt that its best area of possible support was amongst young, working-class males. The BM journals, The Phoenix and British Patriot, thus changed to become much more simplistic and aggressive publications largely shorn of Jordan's pseudoscientific racialism in favour of more basic notions.R. Hill & A. Bell, The Other Face of Terror, p. 121. The BM had also gained some publicity in 1976 when "race martyr" and sometime party activist Robert Relf went on hunger strike in protest at the Race Relations Bill but this proved short-lived as Tyndall quickly signed Relf up to the NF.Walker, The National Front, p. 195. Relf had gained national attention after he advertised his house as being "For Sale - to a white family only". Meanwhile, McLaughlin's baser ideas struck a chord with the growing White power skinhead movement and large numbers of these youths, many of whom were involved in regular acts of violence against non-Whites, flocked to the BM.R. Hill & A. Bell, The Other Face of Terror, pp. 121–122. By 1980 it claimed to have 4,000 members and 25 branches.
The notion of recruiting violent youths to form a street army appealed to Martin Webster who attempted to coax members away from the BM to the NF but the BM only lost a handful of members in this manner before NF leader John Tyndall, mindful of the desire to present a respectable NF image, called a halt to the scheme.Richard Thurlow, Fascism in Britain A History, 1918-1985, Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1987, p. 282. A key strategy for gaining publicity and members was by encouraging violence at football matches and concerts. Nicky Crane, one of the leading figures of the neo-Nazi skinhead movement, joined the BM and became an organiser in Kent.N. Lowles & S. Silver, White Noise, London: Searchlight, 1998. By this time the BM had effectively given up mainstream politics in favour of provocative marches and violence, changes that appealed to the younger element who were disillusioned with the disintegrating NF.Hill & Bell, The Other Face of Terror, p. 125.
Ray Hill's return In 1980, Ray Hill, who had been a leading member of the BM under Jordan before emigrating to South Africa, rejoined the group and soon became one of its leading figures, a decision prompted by the anti-fascist magazine Searchlight, for whom Hill had become a mole.Hill & Bell, The Other Face of Terror, p. 126. Hill was appointed Area Leader in the East Midlands where he was given responsibility for enticing disaffected NF members to join the BM. Before long Hill had added about thirty members in Leicester and had also built a close working relationship with the British Democratic Party in the city. Hill also managed to ensure publicity for the BM from the Leicester Mercury after a riot in the city, a fact that won him the admiration of McLaughlin.Hill & Bell, The Other Face of Terror, p. 130.
Following an incident at a Birmingham hotel in which NF supporters had entered a room booked by the BM and daubed the walls with graffiti Hill suggested to McLaughlin that the breach in security had been the fault of Steve Brady, a leading figure in the League of St. George and the only non-BM member invited to the event. McLaughlin appointed Hill to head up an "anti-subversion unit" as a result, although a lack of funding ensured that the unit never actually convened.Hill & Bell, The Other Face of Terror, pp. 131–132. Nonetheless Hill continued to criticise Brady to McLaughlin and before long Hill had been promoted to the head of the entire Midlands region following the retirement of Birmingham chief Peter Marriner.Hill & Bell, The Other Face of Terror, p. 133.