We are reflecting, exactly 80 years after the events, on the D Day landings. And sighing in exasperation at the efforts of tinpot populists to make some cheap political capital out of the anniversary, moaning that children and young adults are unaware of the history of D Day.
Of course, D Day should be remembered. More than 150,000 Allied troops were ferried to the beaches or parachuted in behind the Axis front lines. Thousands of them died right there, in that action, and thousands more as the invasion pushed inland and headed for Germany.
Of course we should not forget those men, or the 200,000 naval personnel who got the troops to the beaches and then tirelessly provided a relentless covering barrage from offshore. It was a massive undertaking, and it was bloody, and the free world should continue to be grateful.
But we should also remember that this was one element in a six- or seven-year war (many would argue that it started in 1938). And the most important thing to teach in schools is where that war came from.
Take the tale back to World War I, or the Franco-Prussian War if you must. But look long and hard at events between 1918 and 1939, with the barely opposed rise of fascism as it slowly and inexorably marched towards the death camps. Because this is what we should be thinking when we say ’Never again’.
Moments in the war will always have a resonance, be they Dunkirk, Narvik, El Alamein, the ’Cockleshell’ raid, the Atlantic convoys, the Dambusters, the resistance of Malta … the list goes on. Take your pick. But never mistake these moments for what the war was about in the first place – a stand, albeit a belated one, against the march of fascism.
Do not heed the bleating of shabby populists when they complain, as they are doing, that young people today don’t even know what ’D Day’ means. This is childish pre-election prattle designed to conjure up cartoonish images of ’Giving Jerry a bloody nose’ and suchlike.
What matters is not whether people born 50, 60 and 70 years after the events can tell you by rote the date of D Day. It is whether they have been given the tools to understand that the Hitlers and Mussolinis should not be allowed to rise again.
And most of all, that their admirers should not be allowed to flourish here, in these islands that for a terrifying moment stood almost alone against the fascists.
One thing that you have to hand to Nigel Farage is that he’s good at warping the media agenda. The BBC News channel froze all other coverage to subject viewers to a slightly deranged announcement about one slightly down-at-heel seaside town. Or one very shoddy fringe politician. Take your pick.
Yes, Narcissistic Nigel is off to Clacton. Not, as those of us of a certain age might think appropriate, as the not-very-funny stage comedian among the Butlin’s Redcoats. The holiday camp there closed down in 1983, though not without leaving happy memories for some. One of the Searchlight team still has the copy of Billy Bunter Goes To Butlin’s that he won in a competition there in 19… um… well, certainly post-Suez.
Nope, the Farage balloon is being run up on its cable to overshadow the unfortunate town as its 2024 General Election candidate for Reform UK.
No, not the Conservatives. That ship has sailed for the moment – though no doubt it will be back. SS Farage is not a long-haul vessel. More like an Isle of Wight ferry. You wave your hanky to it as it steams off south, and by the time you’ve had your fish and chips and a pint of Nutty Nige IPA (incoherent piss-artist) the same ship is heaving back into view on the exact opposite course.
Admittedly, Clacton has some form as a happy hunting ground for the far-ish right. It went to Ukip in a by-election in 2014 and again in the 2015 General Election. But the candidate then was the defecting Tory Douglas Carswell. Carswell was a mostly well-respected constituency MP – a generally decent man, and certainly no racist, who had a real bee in his bonnet about the EU. He fought the two elections on a call for a referendum, and Clacton plainly agreed.
Frottage, on the other hand, is a carpetbagger. A narcissistic opportunist who no longer has a core policy to promote – the Brexit Referendum having long since come and gone – and instead rambles on about Muslims and The Boats. He may have as much name recognition in Clacton as Carswell did, but we doubt if he has one-tenth of the respect. He’s using the town as a self-publicising stunt, and we rather think that the voters there will see through it.
What has changed in the few days since Farage announced, apparently definitively, that he would not be standing in the election? The Niglet says that his head has been turned by the millions (we’re pretty sure he said ‘millions’) of people who are desperate for him to get up on his hind legs and be their hero. No, no, he said to them, repeatedly, but eventually they wore him down. This shtick was old when penny-farthings roamed the streets. Hell, it was old when the upper crust drove horse-drawn chariots. Think of Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar turning down the Roman crown for effect.
As far as we can see, nothing has happened but Farage publicly issuing a ‘Make me an offer’ plea to the Tory leader, and Richie Richboy (with uncharacteristic audacity) telling him where to stick it. Farage has lost face, and this is his riposte. ‘Take that, Skinnylegs!’ he is saying. ‘Defend Clacton from me, if you can.’ We doubt if it is lead item in the outgoing prime minister’s catalogue of worries.
Interestingly, Farage took the opportunity of the press conference to declare himself Reform’s party leader for the next five years. Because it isn’t really a party in the normal sense. The members have no say in who the leader is. They get no vote because there is no election. And that’s because they aren’t really members, just subscribers. Farage would need to have cleared it with sugar-daddy Tice, but that’s about it.
Delusionally, Farage seemed to claim that this makes him Leader of the Opposition, on the basis that Starmer has already wrapped up the election, and the Tories are no more fit to be the opposition than they were to be the government.
And he says that there’s nothing to distinguish Labour from the Conservatives. Only he is different. Well, we’ll see after the election, but the inevitable post-disaster ousting of Sunak will make it more a case of working out which of the new Conservative leader and Farage is Tweedledum and which Tweedledee.
If he’s going to play on that ‘two cheeks of the same arse’ analogy, we doubt if you’ll be able to fit more than a thong strap between Frottage and Cruella.
Tommy Robinson didn’t take long to take advantage of his ban on entering within the M25 being lifted (through a technicality). Today he mobilised a rag-tag of the far right, football hooligans and others who had been active in anti-lockdown protests to gather in Victoria and march to Parliament Square. There he screened his documentary ‘Lawfare’ in which he peddles the claim that the UK has a two-tier policing system, even though rumours were circulating earlier that the police were considering banning him from doing so.
The Metropolitan Police stated in advance that they were grateful that Robinson had publicly discouraged violence at the event but added that they were aware that many attending had a history of violent disorder and were known football hooligans, and that they were expecting violence would be directed at police officers. The march, in part, was a call for Metropolitan Police chief, Mark Rowley to resign.
The Metropolitan police statement went on to say:
“We also understand why the concern goes beyond the potential for officers to be targeted. For some in London, in particular our Muslim communities, comments made by those associated with this event will also cause fear and uncertainty. All Londoners have a right to feel and be safe in their city and we will take a zero-tolerance approach to any racially or religiously motivated hate crime we become aware of.”
Robinson had claimed that the protest would be ‘massive’ and while we won’t quibble over defining that term, it is of great concern to the anti-fascist and anti-racist movement that he was able to draw a pretty substantial number of people that did really pack the streets. Estimates were originally that 2,500 to 3,000 had gathered but by the time the march had started from Victoria the numbers were looking at possibly 6,500 to 7,000.
Many had probably emerged from the numerous pubs between Victoria and Westminster. The Metropolitan police even noted on Twitter/X that many were ‘intoxicated’, and photos appeared of some urinating in the street.
Robinson, always keen to court an audience, live-streamed the march with reports that the livestream had quickly reached more than 100,000 views, with that number rapidly increasing and no doubt with many views to come after the event. The impact of this as a propaganda tool should not be underestimated – it could bolster numbers at any future mobilisations.
As ‘resting’ actor and failed far-right politician Laurence Fox strolled alongside Robinson, smoking a roll-up, chants of “We want our country back” were heard as well as anti-Muslim chants, while a prominent banner stated “This is London, not Londonistan”.
Robinson was clearly delighted at the turn-out saying when he took to the stage in Parliament Square: “This is what London should look like,’’ adding “First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win. Why does it feel like I’m winning?” As he thanked the thousands who turned out, he said: “We’re not going to be silenced any longer.”
It seems that the numbers in Parliament Square thinned out considerably during the screening of the ‘Lawfare’ documentary on a screen that must have cost Robinson a fair bit to hire.
At 3.38 pm the Metropolitan police Twitter/X account advised those at the Robinson protest to leave via Victoria station. At 5.16pm another Met tweet stated that two arrests had been made in the vicinity of Parliament Square. One, not surprisingly was for a drunk and disorderly offence, and the other was for an incident where a “woman was subjected to racial abuse”.
The fact that the counter protest, called by Stand Up To Racism and supported by many other groups and trade unions, some of which spoke in Whitehall, was unable to mobilise really significant numbers should be of concern.
There had been very strict conditions laid down by the police ahead of the march, dictating that any counter-protest had to be static. Barriers were in place, with police blocking anyone from entering Whitehall from Parliament Square or vice versa. Anyone entering Whitehall from Trafalgar Square had to pass through a police cordon and state if they were attending one of demonstrations – to be directed on the route to take depending on which demo. A few tourists wanting to have their photos taken on Horse Guards parade were also allowed that far.
We need to be alert to future events – whether planned and announced or ‘flash-mobs’ / ‘pop-ups’ – in the coming weeks and months as this is likely to be the first of many outings now that the football season is over. We need to have our ears to the ground and be ready to mobilise at short notice to ensure that the far right don’t steal the streets from us, the majority.
Most coverage of candidates to the right of the Conservative Party will be on Reform UK. But several parties will be trying to position themselves as successors to Reform, anticipating that after 4th July it might either collapse due to disappointment, or merge with a more right-wing Tory party.
Probably the strongest of these minor parties, sitting somewhere between Reform and the openly racist far right, are the English Democrats, founded in 2002 by Essex solicitor Robin Tilbrook (above).
Their main policy is calling for an English Parliament, and though anti-immigration the party does not pursue overt racism. Yet ever since the mid-2000s Tilbrook has made a habit of collaborating with outright fascists as well as far right conspiracy theorists.
In 2004 this was formalised in a pact with the Freedom Party (led by former BNP deputy leader Sharron Edwards and every nazi’s favourite barrister Adrian Davies) and Third Way (the party founded by Patrick Harrington’s faction after the many National Front splits of the 1980s).
Next came an alliance with Mark Cotterill, editor of the nazi magazine Heritage and Destiny, who was then leading the England First Party. Followed by the recruitment of another faction of ex-BNP activists led by Eddy Butler and former Leeds councillor Chris Beverley.
Several dozen BNP members were brought into the EDs by Butler, though most then followed Butler into his next political adventure with the Islamophobic For Britain Movement, or dropped out of politics.
Unabashed, Tilbrook and the EDs moved on to new alliances with a younger generation of nazis and fascists, most recently working with both Mark Collett of Patriotic Alternative (who designed Tilbrook’s leaflet for last month’s Police & Crime Commissioner election in Essex) and Collett’s bitter rival Kenny Smith of the Homeland Party.
More formally, the EDs now have an electoral pact with UKIP.
As with PA and Reform UK, the English Democrats are owned and controlled as a business, in this case by Tilbrook personally, rather than as a normal political party. But unlike UKIP there is no suspicion of the party being used to enrich its owner. In fact, the EDs depend on Tilbrook’s subsidies.
Searchlight expects Tilbrook himself to stand in Epping Forest, and his party to have at most a dozen candidates nationwide. Several regulars are likely to turn up at the polls again, including deputy chairman Therese Hirst, probably in the new Spen Valley constituency, and Steve Morris or party secretary Val Morris in Bury South, as well as the former PCC candidates Henry Curteis and David Dickason.
Curteis is especially keen to promote “peace with Russia” as part of the pro-Putin echo chamber that unites most of the British far right with the supposed socialist, but increasingly Strasserite, George Galloway.
Another pro-Putin “peace” campaigner on the far right is David Kurten who heads the Heritage Party, one of several parties that broke away from UKIP. Kurten’s party is the most active on the conspiracy theory scene, including anti-vaxx demonstrations and the usual raving about “15 minute cities”.
David Kurten
Kurten has promised his members the party will stand ‘dozens’ of candidates but thus far his party has achieved only 1% of its £50,000 appeal target, so it’s uncertain how many they will actually be able to field. But the few areas where they are known to have viable branches include Sheffield, Southend, and Woking.
The same applies to UKIP under their new leader Lois Perry. While UKIP has a pact with the EDs, we expect several constituencies where one or the other of them will stand against Reform UK, and/or against Heritage.
Lois Perry
Since they have opted out of the General Election, the Homeland Party will try to remain on good terms with those parties that are standing. This is part of Kenny Smith’s long-term strategy of appearing credible and looking towards future recruits from such parties when (as he expects) they disintegrate.
The ‘surprise’ of an early general election on July 4th is already being used as an excuse for failure by a wide range of far-right leaders, ranging from Nigel Farage (who sees himself as Britain’s Trump) to Alek Yerbury (who sees himself as Britain’s Hitler).
Nigel Farage – Reform UK’s absent leader
Farage argues that a campaign lasting six weeks was not long enough to establish himself in a constituency. But he and the rest of Reform UK knew that an election would be held some time in 2024. Had he been serious about winning a seat, Farage should have been active in Boston & Skegness (long rumoured to be his likely target) since last autumn.
Instead, he chose to spend more than three weeks in an Australian jungle last November, earning £1.5 million as a guest on the ‘reality show’ I’m a Celebrity.
And during 2024 Farage has opted to spend a lot of time in the USA, where his campaign efforts for Donald Trump and other media appearances again command a fee.
Why should he wish to give his time away for free, spending six weeks on hard campaign work in somewhere like Skegness, only to obtain an underwhelming vote which reduces his credibility on the media circuit?
But as rival right-wingers are quick to point out, why should voters and activists give their time and backing to Reform UK, if its real leader knows that the party isn’t serious?
Richard Tice with Reform’s only MP – the renegade Tory Lee Anderson
Any credible right-wing activist who might otherwise be a natural Reform UK supporter is more likely to stick with the Tories, hoping to turn that party even further rightward after their seemingly inevitable defeat on July 4th. That’s why the factions discussed in the current issue of Searchlight have mostly remained in the Conservative Party and there haven’t been further Westminster defections to Reform.
Farage and his front-man Richard Tice have had to cobble together a list of parliamentary candidates from obscure egomaniacs and social media ranters. Predictably this has already led to 110 candidates having to be purged because they are unable to maintain even a slightly respectable mask covering their extremism.
Potential far-right target constituencies that don’t presently have a Reform UK candidate in place include Hartlepool (recently deserted by Tice), Burnley, both of the Oldham seats, Bradford South, and Doncaster North.
Reform’s website bizarrely still lists ex-MP Simon Danczuk as their Rochdale candidate and asks for help in his by-election campaign, which ended on 29th February. Danczuk’s weak sixth place in that by-election (barely saving his deposit) makes it very unlikely that he will return to take another hammering on July 4th.
One place where readers are unlikely to see Danczuk is Rishi Sunak’s Richmond & Northallerton constituency, where one of Danczuk’s ex-girlfriends, former Tory councillor Lou Dickens, has opted to stand for George Galloway’s misnamed Workers Party rather than for Reform. Ms Dickens’ history of fringe politics and association with far-right extremists might seem to make her a better fit with Reform, but Galloway has already shown that his ‘socialism’ is more of the Strasser or Putin variety than anything previously seen on the democratic left.
Self styled ‘dolly bird’ Louise Dickens (r) with neo-nazi jailbird Jayda Fransen
On the openly fascist right, four parties have already stated their intentions. Paul Golding, leader of Britain First, admitted that he was exhausted by the effort involved in a London mayoral campaign that saw his candidate defeated by ‘Count Binface’ and finishing 12th of 13. After this titanic campaign, Golding told his sycophantic interviewer Alex Merola last Thursday that he had taken three weeks holiday.
Golding went on to admit that Britain First not only will avoid fighting this General Election, they will be avoiding all parliamentary contests (including by-elections) for the foreseeable future. Has something happened to Britain First’s donor base? Or does Golding have some exciting post-election schemes planned? Readers can be sure that whatever Britain First turn to next, it will involve non-stop appeals for funds.
Paul Golding (right) with friend…..
Alek Yerbury – a less cash-focused but more openly nazi contender for leadership of Britain’s far right – has dusted down Sir Oswald Mosley’s script from 1935, when the British Union of Fascists leader decided not to put up general election candidates and kept his powder dry for ‘next time’.
Alek Yerbury – the man who would be fuhrer
Yerbury told his social media followers that even had his recently registered National Rebirth Party been able to mobilise all the resources of British “nationalism” from every party and faction (meaning the fascist end of the spectrum, or what we could call the BNP/NF style) “it would still be so weak that we would be throwing ourselves against the barricade for nothing.”
Like Mosley in 1935, Yerbury argues that he is instead “directing the Party towards a phase of consolidation”.
It would be easy to dismiss this as a sad case of trying to cope with failure, but Yerbury might not be so stupid as he sometimes looks. Though it’s risky to make predictions during the first days of a General Election campaign, it seems likely that after July 4th we shall see a shattered Tory party, a Labour government, and Reform UK having been exposed as irrelevant.
History shows that the two occasions when post-war British fascism became a serious electoral threat were under Labour governments when the Tory party was rebuilding from defeat and disunity: the mid-1970s and the 2000s.
The big difference between then and now is that on each of the previous occasions it was immediately obvious which party was going to be the far-right challenger.
In the 1970s it was the National Front (beating off challenges from splinters such as Kingsley Read’s National Party), and in the 2000s it was the BNP (again easily outpacing splinters and stragglers such as the Freedom Party and the England First Party).
In 2024 it’s not at all obvious which is the ‘serious’ far right challenger and which parties are the fringe.
Following the same Mosleyite script as his hated rival Yerbury, Kenny Smith of the Homeland Party insists that nationalists should be pinning their hopes on “the total destruction of the Conservatives”, allowing for “a realignment of UK politics, opening up areas of debate which have been closed to us.”
Kenny Smith addresses Homeland Training Day
Smith argues that nationalists should now be joining Homeland’s effort to build “viable political options that can make a difference in the next five years”. His problem (as with Yerbury) is that in the short term these efforts involve going on summer camps and demonstrations outside refugee centres, while the rest of the country is choosing its next government.
This incongruity is one reason why the British Democrats, who were created in 2013 as an attempt to unite anti-Griffin factions but took years to get going, have jumped in quickly at the start of this election campaign and announced that they will be fielding candidates.
Their pitch for members and donors is distinct from the rest of the British fascist right, but (so far) they have been careful not to specify exactly how many candidates are involved.
Searchlight can reveal that unless last minute volunteers come forward, the great British Democrat challenge on July 4th will amount to less than a handful of candidates.
Chris Bateman (who is being lined up to succeed septuagenarian Jim Lewthwaite as British Democrat leader) will stand in Basildon & Billericay, and another ex-BNP activist and parish councillor Lawrence Rustem will contest Faversham & Mid Kent. Rustem will seek a pact with fellow fascist Gary Butler who has twice before fought this seat, once as an English Democrat and once as an independent.
Lawrence Rustem (left) and Chris Bateman (2nd from left) campaigning in Basildon
A third British Democrat candidate is likely to be yet another parish councillor, Frank Calladine, who defected from the English Democrats in January this year. Calladine’s parish council seat is in Ed Miliband’s Doncaster North constituency, and a British Democrat campaign there would surely excite some of their old-school nazi members.
Frank Calladine
On his inactive Twitter account Calladine paints himself as a “working class” UKIP supporter, but he has drifted around the far right before ending up carrying the banner of a blatantly fascist party. In 2017 he stood against Miliband as an independent and took 0.9%. By 2019 when he had the advantage (?) of a party label as an English Democrat this fell to 0.8%. Might Calladine be out to break his own record this time as a ‘British Democrat’?
What we don’t yet know for certain is whether party leader Lewthwaite will stand again in Bradford, where he was once a city councillor for the BNP. If he does stand, he would surely be tempted to target Keighley rather than his home constituency Bradford South.
Searchlight expects to see British Democrat president and former National Front chairman Andrew Brons out campaigning for Calladine (and for Lewthwaite if he decides to fight one more campaign before hanging up his jackboots). Brons started his political career in the National Socialist Movement as a follower of Colin Jordan and Françoise Dior, and he might relish the opportunity of campaigning against one of Britain’s highest profile Jewish politicians.
If so, anti-fascists should remind voters of Brons’s political antecedents and of what he regards as acceptable political activities. On 15th June 1965, Brons wrote to the fanatical nazi Françoise Dior (who was at the time married to NSM leader Jordan) discussing a new recruit from Leeds who had “mentioned such activities as bombing synagogues. On this subject I have a dual view, in that although I realise he is well-intentioned, I feel that our public image may suffer considerable damage as a result of these activities. I am however, open to correction on this point.”
Arguably today’s biggest nazi organisation, Patriotic Alternative has yet to declare its intentions. With Yerbury and Smith opting out, it must be tempting for PA’s führer Mark Collett to put up one or two of his members as independent candidates, even though his movement remains unregistered as a political party so cannot have official candidates of its own.
Collett’s problem is that few of his members are really interested in elections, preferring something they pretentiously call “metapolitics” and “community building”.
This amounts to setting up businesses to sell teabags and scented candles online, while taking your members off for hikes in the countryside as a healthier alternative to their usual pastimes such as computer gaming and plotting revolution on ‘secret’ social media channels.
Which is why you are more likely to see a PA activist in the dock than on a ballot paper. Nevertheless, Searchlight will be looking out for PA supporters or other ‘independents’ from the far right attempting to fly under the radar as ‘community activists’ at this election.
Searchlight will be looking at the involvement of other far right parties in the General Election in forthcoming articles
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