Colin Jordan and Britain’s Neo-Nazi Movement: Hitler’s Echo, by Paul Jackson

Abstract

While investigations into the British far right have continued to boom over recent years, one aspect which has been under-examined, in contrast to the numerous studies of Oswald Mosley and the British Union of Fascists, is neo-Nazism. Through his study of Colin Jordan, easily Britain’s most influential and longest-serving neo-Nazi, Paul Jackson has made an important contribution by producing an impeccably researched monograph which stands out in an increasingly crowded field. As Jackson notes, it is both a biography of one of Britain’s most notorious neo-Nazis as well as an examination of the post-war far right within which he operated. While it is undoubtedly more comprehensive in achieving the former, its implications for the study of the far right more generally are plain to see. Jordan’s political career, from his early activism at Cambridge University’s Nationalist Club during the 1940s to his role as independent neo-Nazi elder statesman during Tony Blair’s premiership, is shown to be one of repeated failure and marginality. Yet his influence on the far right’s most extreme fringes, both in Britain and abroad, is significant. Jordan’s career reflects the tensions that exist today on the extreme right over the best course of action to sell a Hitlerian vision of society to a public utterly repulsed at the prospect. Jordan initially appeared to recognise the futility of engaging in democratic politics in the 1960s when leader of the National Socialist Movement. Buoyed by palpable public dissatisfaction with Commonwealth immigration following Enoch Powell’s ‘Rivers of Blood’ speech, he then flirted with democratic politics and winning support at the ballot box as leader of the British Movement from 1968 to 1975. This was to prove fruitless. His only impact on British politics was fleeting notoriety in the media. Jordan, refusing to compromise one inch on his violent utopian vision concluded that fighting elections was a losing strategy for the far right. Following this, until his death in 2009, Jordan acted largely alone, spreading his anti-Jewish conspiratorial ideas and seeking to create a revolutionary Nazi vanguard. Jordan came to believe that the only way national socialism could attain power once again was by cultivating a small elite of true believers who will seize power by force.