The anti-Semitic, racist National Front Party is planning a major effort in the next general elections to gain attention. The group, which claims 22,000 members although only 720 pay dues, announced that it would field 318 candidates in the next Parliamentary elections for the sole purpose of demanding equal television time with the major political parties.
The National Front had some impact in recent bi-elections and local Parliamentary contests by exploiting prejudice against colored immigrants. An analysis of these elections, prepared by Dr. Jacob Gewirtz for the Board of Deputies of British Jews, warned that “It should be apparent to all now that the National Front is a very real menace. They showed considerable skill in organizing their campaign so that they could concentrate their limited resources in a few selected areas of social unrest and racial strife.”
Gewirtz added, “What is happening now is a window-dressing exercise to cover the Front’s past record of neo-Nazi activity and to derive power from the immigrant question. The thing we fear most is that just as Hitler took the Jewish question to the streets of Germany, so will the National Front take the immigrant question away from Parliament on to the streets of Britain.”
John Kingsley Read, leader of a rival rightwing party which opposes colored immigration but abhors the Nazi aspects of the National Front, said that the Front’s ultimate target is Jews. According to Read, John Tyndall, “the fuehrer” of the National Front “told me that his plans are to use the immigrant issue to gain power and then get rid of the race he hates the most, the Jews.”
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The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
