From Mosley to the summer riots of 2024: the opportunistic evolution of Britain’s far right

In the summer of 2024, racist violence broke out in towns and cities across the UK, sparked by the deaths of three children in Southport and a lot of misinformation and lies online. A number of groups were involved in the rioting. Graham Macklin charts the postwar history of British far-right movements which have emerged, grown and diminished over the last few decades

Members of the National Front speak to the press in 1978. Chairman John Tyndall (second from left) was a neo-Nazi who later founded the British National Party (Photo by Evening Standard/Getty Images)

Published: November 21, 2024 at 4:10 PM

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By the 1950s, Sir Oswald Mosley’s political career seemed in irreparable tatters. Fronting the antisemitic British Union of Fascists (BUF), and backed by quasi-paramilitary Blackshirt thugs, during the 1930s he had enjoyed a degree of public support.

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After the outbreak of the Second World War, however, that support turned to widespread hostility. Interned in 1940, for fear he and his followers would form a ‘fifth column’ should Hitler invade Britain, in 1951 he emigrated and left national politics. When race riots broke out in west London’s Notting Hill district in 1958, he thought again.

Gangs of young white ‘Teddy Boys’ attacked members of the Afro-Caribbean community, sparking three days of violence. And fascists saw an opportunity to exploit the simmering tensions.

The Union Movement – Mosley’s postwar political vehicle – had long been active in that part of London, as had other, smaller racist sects. His party quickly mobilised to take advantage of the situation, holding dozens of provocative meetings.

Now viewing the area as fertile ground for the resurrection of his career, Mosley returned to England and stood for election in Kensington North in the 1959 general election. His party saturated the constituency with racist propaganda. He styled himself as the redoubtable defender of a white working class ignored by the Labour Party that favoured migrants over the indigenous white residents – a familiar narrative for today’s far right.

His dominant message was that the area’s very real deprivation could be solved only through the repatriation of the ‘coloured’ community. In the event, Mosley polled only 8.1 per cent of the vote. His supporters openly wept, and he refused to accept the result; claiming it was rigged, he petitioned the High Court, unsuccessfully.

This episode tells us a good deal about both the British far right and its relationship to racist mob violence, which in turn can inform our understanding of the violence that played out across British cities in the summer of 2024. It also prompts us to reflect on the historical development of Britain’s far right since 1945.

Emergence of the British National Party (BNP)

Organised anti-black politics had begun in south London in the early 1950s when a small cadre of activists campaigned to ‘Keep Brixton White’. Mosley was not initially persuaded that this ‘burning local issue’ had national relevance, but as we’ve seen, despite his reservations, he soon leapt on the bandwagon. Though antisemitism was never far from the surface, racism more broadly became the defining feature of far-right campaigns.

Mosley retired from active politics in 1966, by which time he had become irrelevant to a younger generation of far-right militants who embraced biological racism, antisemitism and national socialist politics.

Initially, the most infamous of these activists was Colin Jordan, a disciple of the interwar Nazi polemicist Arnold Leese. Jordan operated his White Defence League from a property in Notting Hill that had been lent to him by Leese’s widow. He subsequently merged his venture with others to form the British National Party (BNP) which, during the early 1960s, highlighted the electoral promise of racial politics.

In the 1964 election, BNP leader John Bean polled 9.3 per cent of the vote in Southall – the highest percentage then achieved by a far-right candidate. Much of Bean’s work to revitalise the far right was overshadowed, however, by Jordan’s antics.

Jordan split from the BNP in 1962, together with a young activist called John Tyndall, to form the National Socialist Movement (NSM). “Hitler was right,” Jordan declared shortly afterwards. He and several colleagues were jailed for offences including seeking to form a paramilitary group.

Colin Jordan, leader of the National Socialist Movement, is released from prison in 1963. He holds a copy of the National Socialist, bearing a photo of Adolf Hitler and the headline "His spirit lives on!" Photo by Evening Standard/Hulton Archive/Getty Images)

Colin Jordan, leader of the National Socialist Movement, is released from prison in 1963. He holds a copy of the National Socialist, bearing a photo of Adolf Hitler and the headline "His spirit lives on!" Photo by Evening Standard/Hulton Archive/Getty Images)

From 1965, NSM activists engaged in cross burnings in the Midlands and an arson campaign against synagogues. Such Nazi histrionics, and the headlines they generated, obscured a broader realignment then taking place on the far right – one that in 1967 led to the formation of the National Front (NF) under the chairmanship of British activist and journalist AK Chesterton.

The following year, on 20 April 1968, Conservative ex-minister Enoch Powell delivered his infamous ‘Rivers of Blood’ speech, which brought his career in the shadow cabinet to a grinding halt – but which attracted widespread public support and delivered a notable fillip to the fledging NF.

Idi Amin’s expulsion of Asians from Uganda from August 1972 – 38,500 arrived in Britain over the next 12 months – helped the NF garner mass support. Membership is thought to have peaked at 17,500 that year, though thousands more passed through its ranks during its existence. In May 1973, an NF candidate polled 16 per cent of the vote in West Bromwich.

Despite his overtly neo-Nazi background – a source of tension for many leading members, who desired to dissociate the NF’s racist programme from fascism – Tyndall succeeded in becoming party chairman in July 1972. He focused on controlling the streets rather than building an effective electoral machine, and was at the helm when the organisation imploded in 1979 following a disastrous general election performance.

Skinheads and ‘Rights for Whites’

If Powell opened the door to the NF’s expansion in 1968, another Conservative politician, Margaret Thatcher, slammed it shut a decade later by co-opting the NF’s core issue: immigration. Once one of Europe’s largest far-right parties and a model for Jean-Marie Le Pen’s Front National, the NF splintered. Tyndall formed another British National Party in 1982, but failed to move the dial.

The far right became synonymous with racist skinhead violence and football hooliganism, and languished in the political doldrums for the next 30 years.

In 1999, Nick Griffin, a University of Cambridge graduate who had joined the NF as a teenager, ousted Tyndall from the BNP with a mandate to modernise it. This train was already in motion: a sustained ‘Rights for Whites’ campaign and a string of promising election results had culminated in 1993 when the BNP won a solitary council seat in London’s East End.

If Powell opened the door to the National Front’s expansion in 1968, another Conservative politician, Margaret Thatcher, slammed it shut a decade later by co-opting the NF’s core issue: immigration

BNP leaders began to take seriously the idea that if they overhauled the party and distanced themselves from disorder, they might build a successful electoral machine. While this process took time, the BNP benefited immeasurably from two events in 2001, both beyond its control.

First, riots broke out in Oldham that May, then in Burnley in June, and Bradford in July. The BNP, previously active in all three cities, ramped up its campaign. Griffin stood in Oldham West and Royton during the 2001 general election, polling 16.4 per cent of the vote; another BNP candidate polled 11 per cent in the neighbouring constituency of Oldham East and Saddleworth. The party made its local election breakthrough in Burnley, Lancashire, the following year.

The second pivotal event was 9/11, and the subsequent ‘war on terror’ that hardwired anti-Muslim politics into the rhetoric of the far right. Until this point, Asians had been targeted largely for their skin colour, not their religious identity. Griffin, previously one of Britain’s most ardent Holocaust deniers, intuitively understood that anti-Muslim politicking, based on ‘culture’ rather than biological racism, could propel the BNP into mainstream British politics.

He was not wrong. The BNP subsequently became the most electorally successful far-right party in British history and, though parliamentary representation proved elusive, in 2009 the party gained two MEPs, including Griffin. The BNP went on to poll 564,321 votes (1.9 per cent) in the 2010 general election, a significant increase on the 192,745 (0.7 per cent) it had gained in 2005.

Ironically, the best results recorded by a far-right party in a general election proved a mortal blow to the BNP’s fortunes. The party imploded amid infighting, and today is moribund. Much of its electoral base subsequently shifted to an ascendant UKIP.

The brief history of the English Defence League (EDL)

Britain’s far right took nearly three decades to recover from the collapse of the NF in 1979; 15 years on from its own implosion, the downfall of the BNP can be viewed as no less profound. Even before this, however, the BNP was facing a new challenge to its hegemony in the shape of the English Defence League (EDL), which focused on the notion that Islam is culturally incompatible with a ‘British’ way of life.

Led by Stephen Yaxley-Lennon, going by the name Tommy Robinson, at its peak thousands of people joined EDL demonstrations. With no real political strategy, though, the EDL marched itself into a political cul-de-sac, and Robinson resigned in 2013. Without him at the helm, the group quickly dissipated.

The EDL remnants were subsumed into a burgeoning constellation of disparate anti-Muslim groups and individuals who occasionally came together for larger mobilisations. The ‘Free Tommy’ demonstrations of 2018, for example, were attended by an estimated 10,000 people – activism on a scale unseen since the 1970s.

Far-right terrorism

One cluster of youthful militants now chose another path. Their group, a small neo-Nazi sect called National Action (NA), was banned in 2016 for being “concerned with terrorism” after its members glorified the murder of Jo Cox MP by a white supremacist. NA became the first far-right group to be banned since Mosley’s BUF in 1940, and the first in British history to be banned for terrorism.

Proscription did little to combat solo terrorists, however, particularly those targeting Muslims and migrants. In 2017, Darren Osborne drove a van into worshippers outside Finsbury Park Mosque, killing one person and injuring 11.

While far-right terrorism remains rare, anti-migrant protest is an alarmingly common occurrence, whether in the form of public demonstrations, blockades of proposed accommodation sites, or the actions of self-styled ‘migrant hunters’ filming and harassing asylum seekers and staff at premises providing accommodation.

National Action (NA) became the first far-right group to be banned since Mosley’s BUF in 1940, and the first in British history to be banned for terrorism

The 2024 riots remind us that the violence of racist mobs physically attacking asylum hotels is a more extreme manifestation of the same politics. The EDL did not organise these riots; some activists align themselves with the brand, but the organisation is essentially defunct. In truth, the precise role far right groups played in this summer’s riots is yet unknown.

Though a handful of known far-right activists were observed during the disorder, it is most likely that the involvement of such people was following a recurring historical pattern. As Mosley’s example illustrates, far-right groups have been caught on the back foot by the explosion of violence that follows a catalytic event – in the most recent case, the horrific murder of three young girls attending a dance class in Southport.

This was certainly the case during the antisemitic riots of 1947, the Notting Hill riots in 1958, the Cannon Street riots in Middlesbrough in 1961 and those in Oldham in 2001. Once these riots were under way, though, far-right agitators either stoked the embers or made political capital from them afterwards.

Far-right groups today: the role of social media

The recent riots also highlight how the contemporary far right, as currently configured, has evolved from recognisable political entities into what most researchers would agree is a ‘post-organisational’ form. People no longer ‘join’ far-right groups.

Indeed, individual interaction with this milieu is often entirely mediated through digital media; few ever physically attend a political meeting. The rioters chanting Robinson’s name were not members of his group, but identified with the politics he represents.

Rotherham in South Yorkshire saw some of the most shocking violence this summer. A mob, several hundred strong, battled with police while others forced their way inside a hotel and attempted to burn it down, with several hundred asylum seekers inside.

Anti-fascist protesters marching in Nottingham on 3 August 2024. Thousands took to the streets across the UK to demonstrate against the violence that erupted this summer (Photo by Darren Staples / AFP) (Photo by DARREN STAPLES/AFP via Getty Images)

Anti-fascist protesters marching in Nottingham on 3 August 2024. Thousands took to the streets across the UK to demonstrate against the violence that erupted this summer (Photo by Darren Staples / AFP) (Photo by DARREN STAPLES/AFP via Getty Images)

This attack invites comparison with events in Germany three decades ago: in Hoyerswerda (1991), Rostock, Mölln (both 1992) and Solingen (1993), skinheads and neo-Nazis attacked migrant communities and asylum seekers in perhaps the worst orgy of racist violence that nation had witnessed since 1945.

The riots also remind us that racist violence does not take place in a vacuum. In Rostock, grainy footage of the attacks captured the presence of a large crowd of onlookers cheering on those who would have incinerated the building’s inhabitants. Crowds legitimating and egging on violence featured in Rotherham, too: laughing, cheering, filming. In one clip, a man with a child on his shoulders stood only yards away from gangs of men attacking police.

Rotherham in South Yorkshire saw some of the most shocking violence this summer. A mob, several hundred strong, battled with police while others forced their way inside a hotel and attempted to burn it down, with several hundred asylum seekers inside

Participants in this summer’s riots live-streamed them. Documenting and revelling in such violence is hardly a new phenomenon: history reminds us of those older accoutrements – photos and postcards – sold as mementos to celebrate and remember the actions of the racist mob. Social media plays an outsized role in fuelling anger and outrage, but this is simply the modern medium for a very old message.

The dissemination of disinformation this summer has been framed as something new, but racist rumour has always fuelled racist violence. The antisemitic canard of the ‘blood libel’ contributed to the massacre of Jews in York in 1190, for example.

What is new is the speed at which such rumours and lies spread online, as well as their scope and source. Hours after the murders in Southport, social media accounts spread the lie that the perpetrator was an asylum seeker recently arrived in England on a small boat. This claim online stoked much of the initial unrest.

Impact of the 2024 riots

Historians are not oracles. It is, of course, far too early to understand the lasting impacts of this summer’s racist rioting on British society or, indeed, the political fortunes of the far right.

Though the far right’s electoral, street and terrorist strategies have been all but nullified in the past decade, it has not gone away. Far-right groups remain marginal, yet many of their ideas have been co-opted and absorbed into mainstream politics. It is perhaps here, in the reinforcement of a political narrative that multicultural society has failed and that civil war is imminent, that the far right can be seen to have left its mark.

Graham Macklin is assistant professor at the Center for Research on Extremism (C-REX) at the University of Oslo, Norway and author of Failed Führers: A History of Britain’s Extreme Right (Routledge, 2020)

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This article was first published in the November 2024 issue of BBC History Magazine

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