Founded ten years ago, the National Front is now the country’s fourth largest political party, winning increasing success in local and national elections.Its leadership includes men who were once proud to be termed Nazi, who served prison sentences for organizing para-military groups, who talked of Jews as ‘maggots’, of blacks as ‘scum’, and who dreamt of the coming of the ‘chill north wind flaunting the swastika banner in the sky’. Its central message remains one of racial hatred. Yet, such men, and such a party, have achieved electoral respectability.Martin Walker of the Guardian has been studying the National Front for four years; in this dispassionate account he traces the development of the far right since Mosley, and shows how the National Front grew out of that tradition. He examines the Front’s leadership and members, its policies and its appeal, and shows how it has been able to exploit issues such as immigration to win a substantial following.The National Front can no longer be dismissed as a party of the lunatic fringe; it must be understood, if it is to be opposed. Martin Walker’s book is the first to make such an understanding possible.
