John Tyndall (far-right Activist)

John Hutchyns Tyndall (14 July 193419 July 2005) was a British fascist political activist. A leading member of various small neo-Nazi groups during the late 1950s and 1960s, he was chairman of the National Front (NF) from 1972 to 1974 and again from 1975 to 1980, and then chairman of the British National Party (BNP) from 1982 to 1999. He unsuccessfully stood for election to the House of Commons and European Parliament on several occasions.

Born in Devon and educated in Kent, Tyndall undertook national service prior to embracing the extreme-right. In the mid-1950s, he joined the League of Empire Loyalists (LEL) and came under the influence of its leader, Arthur Chesterton. Finding the LEL too moderate, in 1957 he and John Bean founded the National Labour Party (NLP), an explicitly "National Socialist" (Nazi) group. In 1960, the NLP merged with Colin Jordan's White Defence League to found the first British National Party (BNP). Within the BNP, Tyndall and Jordan established a paramilitary wing called Spearhead, which angered Bean and other party members. They expelled Tyndall and Jordan, who went on to establish the National Socialist Movement and then the international World Union of National Socialists. In 1962, they were convicted and briefly imprisoned for their paramilitary activities. After a split with Jordan, Tyndall formed his Greater Britain Movement (GBM) in 1964. Although never changing his basic beliefs, by the mid-1960s, Tyndall was replacing his overt references to Nazism with appeals to British nationalism.

In 1967, Tyndall joined Chesterton's newly founded National Front (NF) and became its leader in 1972, overseeing growing membership and electoral growth. His leadership was threatened by various factions within the party which eventually led to him losing his position as leader in 1974. He resumed this position in 1975, although the latter part of the 1970s saw the party's prospects decline. Following an argument with long-term comrade Martin Webster, Tyndall resigned from the party in 1980 and formed his short-lived New National Front (NNF). In 1982, he merged the NNF into his own newly formed British National Party (BNP). Under Tyndall, the BNP established itself as the UK's most prominent extreme-right group during the 1980s, although electoral success eluded it. Tyndall's refusal to moderate the BNP's policies or image caused anger among a growing array of "modernisers" in the party, who ousted him in favour of Nick Griffin in 1999. In 2005, Tyndall was charged with incitement to racial hatred for comments made at a BNP meeting. He died two days before his trial was due to take place.

Tyndall promoted a racial nationalist belief in a distinct white "British race", arguing that this race was threatened by a Jewish conspiracy to encourage non-white migration into Britain. He called for the establishment of an authoritarian state which would deport all non-whites from the country, engage in a eugenics project, and re-establish the British Empire through the military conquest of parts of Africa. He never gained any mainstream political respectability in the United Kingdom although he proved popular among sectors of the British far-right.

Early life

1934–1958: Youth

John Tyndall was born in Stork Nest, Topsham Road in Exeter, Devon, on 14 July 1934, the son of Nellie Tyndall, ''née'' Parker and George Francis Tyndall. Through the Tyndall family line, he was related to the early English translator of the Bible, William Tyndale and the physicist John Tyndall. His paternal family were British Unionists living in County Waterford, Ireland, who had a long line of service in the Royal Irish Constabulary. His grandfather had been a district inspector in the Constabulary and he had also fought against the Irish Republican Army during the Irish War of Independence. His father had moved to England, working as a Metropolitan Police officer, and then he worked as a warden at St George's House, a YMCA hostel in Southwark. Tyndall later stated that despite the fact that his father had been raised in a British Unionist family, the latter had adopted internationalist views. He claimed that his mother exhibited "a kind of basic British patriotism" and he also claimed that it was she who shaped his early political views. His upbringing was emotionally stable and materially secure. Tyndall studied at the Beckenham and Penge Grammar School in west Kent, where he attained three O-levels, a "moderate" result. At the school, his achievements had been sporting rather than academic, because he enjoyed playing cricket and association football and he also developed a passion for fitness.

Tyndall completed his national service in West Germany from 1952 to 1954. A member of the Royal Horse Artillery, he achieved the rank of lance-bombardier. On completion, he returned to Britain and turned his attention to political issues. Initially interested in socialism, he attended a world youth festival which was held in the Soviet Union in 1957. Nevertheless, he began to believe that left-wing politics was being infused with "anti-British attitudes", moving swiftly to the political right. He was devoted to the preservation of the British Empire and he was hostile to what he believed was the growing permissiveness of British society, stating that "the smell everywhere was one of decadence". During that decade he read ''Mein Kampf'', the autobiography and political manifesto of the Nazi leader Adolf Hitler, growing sympathetic to Hitler's political beliefs and Nazism. In particular, Tyndall approved of "the descriptions of the workings of certain Jewish forces in Germany, which seemed uncannily similar to what I had observed of the same kinds of forces in Britain." He concluded that Britain's decision to go to war against Nazi Germany was ultimately the result of a conspiracy which was primarily headed by Jews, a conspiracy which he thought had also masterminded non-white immigration to Britain after the war.

Around 1957–58, Tyndall decided to commit himself to his political cause full-time, which he was able to do because his job as a salesman allowed him to keep flexible working hours. He decided against joining the Union Movement which was led by the prominent British fascist Oswald Mosley, disagreeing with its promotion of the political union of Britain with continental Europe. Instead, he was attracted to the League of Empire Loyalists (LEL)a right-wing group founded by Arthur Chestertonafter seeing coverage of one of their demonstrations on television. He visited their basement office in Westminster, where he was given some of their literature. He enjoyed Chesterton's writings and concurred with his conspiracy theory that Jewish people had been plotting to bring down the British Empire. Tyndall began associating with other young men who had joined the LEL. At a February 1957 by-election in Lewisham North, Tyndall aided the LEL campaign, during which he met another party member, John Bean, an industrial chemist. Both Tyndall and Bean were frustrated by the LEL's attempts to exert pressure on the mainstream Conservative Party. They wanted to be involved in a more radical party, one that would combine "nationalism" with "popular socialism" and which would reach out to the white working class through appeals against immigration from the Caribbean.

1958–1962: National Labour Party and the first British National Party

In April 1958, Tyndall and Bean founded their own extreme-right group, the National Labour Party (NLP). The group was based at Thornton Heath, Croydon and attracted its early membership from former LEL members living in south and east London. According to the historian Richard Thurlow, the NLP promoted an "English" variant of Nazism and was more pronounced in its "explicit racism" than the LEL had been, focusing less on bemoaning the decline of the British Empire and more on criticising the arrival of non-white immigrants from former British colonies.

The NLP began co-operating with another extreme-right group, the White Defence League, which had been established by Colin Jordan, a secondary school teacher. Together the two groups embarked on a project of stirring up racial tensions among white Britons and black Caribbean immigrants in Notting Hill. Tyndall briefly left the NLP and in his absence Bean and Jordan merged their respective groups into the British National Party (BNP) in 1960. The BNP were racial nationalists, calling for the preservation of a "Nordic race"—of which the "British race" was considered a branch—by removing both immigrants and Jewish influences from Britain. Tyndall soon joined this new BNP, and became a close confidante of Jordan, who helped Tyndall to further embrace neo-Nazism. Tyndall also developed a friendship with Martin Webster, who became a long-term comrade after watching Tyndall speak at a Trafalgar Square rally in 1962.

In April 1961, Tyndall self-published his pamphlet, ''The Authoritarian State: Its Meaning and Function'', which helped to cement his reputation within the British far-right. In the pamphlet, he attacked democratic systems of government as part of a conspiracy orchestrated by Jews, quoting from ''The Protocols of the Elders of Zion''. It called for the replacement of the United Kingdom's liberal democratic system with an authoritarian one in which a "Leader" is given absolute power.

Within the BNP, Tyndall established an elite group known as Spearhead, members of which wore military-style uniforms inspired by those of the Nazis and underwent paramilitary and ideological training. Tyndall had a great liking for wearing jackboots - Jordan related that on the way to a far-right meeting in Germany, Tyndall made his entourage look for a shoe shop so that he could purchase a pair of genuine German jackboots. It is likely that there were no more than 60 members of Spearhead. The group campaigned on behalf of imprisoned Nazi war criminals Rudolf Hess and Adolf Eichmann documentary, ''The Secret Agent''. On 12 December 2004, these comments resulted in Tyndall being arrested on suspicion of incitement to racial hatred. That month, Tyndall was again expelled from the BNP, this time permanently. The police then charged him, although he was granted unconditional bail in April 2005. Tyndall died of heart failure at his flat—52 Westbourne Villas in Hove—on 19 July 2005. He had been due to stand trial at Leeds Magistrates' Court two days later. He was survived by his wife and his daughter, Marina.

Policies and views

Tyndall has been described as a racial nationalist, and a British nationalist, as well as a fascist, neo-fascist, and a neo-Nazi. Tyndall adhered to neo-Nazism during the 1960s, although from the 1970s onward he increasingly concealed this behind the rhetoric of "British patriotism". According to Thurlow, this was because by this time Tyndall had realised that "open Nazism was counter-productive" to his cause. This was in accordance with a wider trend among Britain's far-right to avoid the term "British fascism", with its electorally unpalatable connotations and instead refer to "British nationalism" in its public appeals. Sykes stated that Tyndall split with Jordan because—in contrast to the latter's neo-Nazi focus on pan-'Aryan' unity—he "thought more traditionally in terms of British nationalism, the British race and the British Empire". Jordan himself accused Tyndall of being "an extreme Tory imperialist, a John Bull, unable to recognise the call of race beyond Britain's frontiers".

Tyndall later described his membership of these openly neo-Nazi groups as a "youthful indiscretion". He expressed the view that while he regretted his involvement in them, he was not ashamed of having done so: "though some of my former beliefs were mistaken, I will never acknowledge that there was anything dishonourable about holding them." As leader of the NF he continued to openly approve of Hitler's social and economic programme and well as his policies of German territorial expansion. In his 1988 autobiography ''The Eleventh Hour'', he stated that while he thought that "many of itler'sintentions were good ones and many of his achievements admirable", he did not think "that it is right for a British movement belonging to an entirely different phase of history to model itself on the movement of Hitler".

Following this shift away from overt allegiance to Nazism, Tyndall's supporters and detractors continued to dispute whether he remained a convinced Nazi. Academic commentators consider that his basic ideological world-view did not change. In 1981, Nigel Fielding stated that while Tyndall's views had "moderated remarkably", in the NF he had still "preserve and defend d "those traits which were the hallmark" of earlier neo-Nazi groups. Walker noted that in October 1975 Tyndall wrote articles for ''Spearhead'' which had clearly "returned to the language and ideology of the Nazi days", and that another article printed the previous month was "pure Nazism in that it reflects exactly the mood and spirit of ''Mein Kampf''." The historian Nicholas Goodrick-Clarke stated that Tyndall simply "cloaked his former extremism in British nationalism", while the journalist Daniel Trilling commented that "Tyndall's claim to have moderated his views was merely expedient". On his death, ''The Guardian'' stated that Tyndall had remained "a racist, violent neo-Nazi to the end", while Trilling described Tyndall as having had "a long pedigree in the most extreme and violent quarters of Britain's far right".

The political scientist Nigel Copsey believed that Chesterton had been the "seminal influence" on Tyndall's thought. Thurlow disagreed, arguing that Tyndall had been influenced less by Chesterton and Mosley and more by a third figure in Britain's "fascist tradition", Arnold Leese. Thurlow noted that Tyndall adopted Leese's "political intransigence… his refusal to compromise with political reality and his willingness to martyr himself for his beliefs". According to Trilling, the "two guiding stars in… Tyndall's political universe" were Hitler and the British Empire. In contrast to many of his contemporaries in the British far-right, Tyndall was "thoroughly indifferent" to the ideas of the Nouvelle Droite, a French extreme-right movement which had emerged in the 1960s. Whereas the Nouvelle Droite sought to move away from the approach adopted by the fascist movements of the 1930s and 1940s, Tyndall remained wedded to white racial nationalism, anti-Semitic conspiracy theories and nostalgia for the British Empire, all approaches generally repudiated by the Nouvelle Droite.

Race and nationalism

Tyndall had "deeply entrenched" biologically racist views, akin to those of earlier fascists like Hitler and Leese. He believed that there was a biologically distinct white-skinned "British race" which was one branch of a wider Nordic race. Tyndall was of the view that race defined a nation and that "if that is lost we will have no nation in the future." He believed the Nordic race to be superior to others, and under his leadership, the BNP promoted a variety of pseudoscientific claims in support of white supremacy. Those parties he controlled restricted membership to people of Northern European ethnic heritage.

Over the course of his career in far-right politics, Tyndall became less outspoken on race after his prosecution under the race relations legislation. In the mid-1970s, Tyndall used ''Spearhead'' to claim that "the negro has a smaller brain and a much less complex cerebral structure" than white Europeans. In 1988, Tyndall described his crime as having "dared to publish an honest and frank opinion on the relative merits of Whites and Negroes." Tyndall argued that non-whites were unassimilable to Britain and that those living in Britain should be repatriated. Tyndall strongly objected to interracial relationships and miscegenation and remarked in his book ''The Eleventh Hour'': "I feel deeply sorry for the child of a mixed marriage, but I can have no sympathy whatever for the parents… They produced an offspring that will never wholly fit and will undoubtedly face a life much harder than the normal person born of pure race." In contrast to his views on non-white migration, he spoke positively of white immigrants from Ireland, Poland, Hungary and the Baltic states, regarding them as being racially similar and sharing the "same basic culture" as the British and were thus easily able to assimilate "within a generation or two".

Tyndall was antisemitic. From earlier fascists like Chesterton, he had inherited a belief that there was a global conspiracy of Jews bent on world domination, opining that ''The Protocols of the Elders of Zion'' was genuine evidence for this. He believed that Jews were responsible for both communism and international finance capitalism, using both to their own ends and that they were responsible for undermining the British Empire and the British race. Tyndall also believed that both democratic government and immigration into Europe were parts of a Jewish conspiracy to weaken other races. In an early edition of ''Spearhead'', he had expressed the view that "if Britain were to become Jew-clean she would have no nigger neighbours to worry about… It is the Jews who are our misfortune: T-h-e J-e-w-s. Do you hear me? THE JEWS?" Another of his comments, made in 1963, was that "Jewry is a world pest wherever it is found in the world today. The Jews are more clever and more financially powerful than other people and have to be eradicated before they destroy the Aryan peoples".

Tyndall also engaged in Holocaust denial, declaring that the Holocaust was a hoax created by Jews to gain sympathy for themselves and thus aid their plot for world domination. In ''The Eleventh Hour'', Tyndall spoke approvingly of Holocaust denier David Irving. In promoting Holocaust denial, Tyndall and those close to him may have been seeking to rehabilitate Hitler and the Nazi government in the British public's view.

Governance

In the early 1960s, Tyndall espoused the idea of replacing Britain's liberal democratic government—which he regarded as a front for the Jewish world conspiracy—with an authoritarian system that he believed would be free of Jewish influence. Between 1961 and 1966 there was a shift in Tyndall's publicly espoused views. This focused largely on his beliefs about the structure of an ideal government for—while not rejecting the idea of an authoritarian dictatorship altogether—he placed greater emphasis on the need for the government to be more acceptable to the population. Rather than self-describing himself as an authoritarian, by the mid-1960s he was accusing the country's mainstream parties (and the "liberal minority" whom he alleged ran them) of being the real authoritarians, thus portraying himself as a champion of democracy. In this he presented his arguments in a populist manner.

Tyndall believed that liberal democracy was damaging to British society, claiming that liberalism was a "doctrine of decay and degeneration". Under Tyndall, the NF and BNP sought to dismantle the UK's liberal democratic system of parliamentary governance, although both groups were vague about what they sought to replace this system with. In his 1988 work ''The Eleventh Hour'', Tyndall wrote of the need for "an utter rejection of liberalism and a dedication to the resurgence of authority". Tyndall's BNP perceived itself as a revolutionary force that would bring about a national rebirth in Britain, entailing a radical transformation of society. It proposed a state in which the Prime Minister would have full executive powers and would be elected directly by the population for an indefinite period of time. This Prime Minister could be dismissed from office in a further election that could be called if Parliament passed a vote of no confidence. It stated that rather than having any political parties, candidates standing for election to the parliament would be independent.

Tyndall described his approach to the economy as "National Economics", expressing the view that "politics must lead and not be led by, economic forces". His approach rejected economic liberalism because it did not serve "the national interest", although still saw advantages in a capitalist system, looking favourably on individual enterprise. He called on capitalist elements to be combined with socialist ones, with the government playing a role in planning the economy. He promoted the idea of the UK becoming an autarky which was economically self-sufficient, with domestic production protected from foreign competition. This attitude was heavily informed by the corporatist system that had been introduced in Benito Mussolini's Fascist Italy.

Under Tyndall, the NF alleged that internationalist institutions and organisations were part of the global Jewish conspiracy. Under Tyndall's leadership, the BNP had overt anti-Europeanist tendencies, and throughout the 1980s and 1990s he maintained the party's opposition to the European Economic Community. Arguing that Britain should establish a White Commonwealth bloc, Tyndall called for a better relationship with South Africa and Rhodesia, and urged those nations to permanently retain their systems of racial segregation. He claimed that "power and responsibility" should not be given to the indigenous Africans living in these countries because they were "ill-fitted to use twisely". He expressed support for Hitler's ''lebensraum'' policy of territorial expansion and claimed that the British race required something similar. In ''The Eleventh Hour'', he called for the British to re-colonise parts of Africa.

Social

During Tyndall's period of leadership the BNP promoted eugenics, calling for the forced sterilisation of those with genetically transmittable disabilities. In party literature, it talked of improving the British "racial stock" by removing "inferior strains within the indigenous races of the British Isles". In his magazine ''Spearhead'', Tyndall had stated that "sub-human elements", "perverts" and "asocials" should be eliminated from Britain through "the gas chamber system". When questioned as to whether Tyndall would seek to exterminate other races if he was in power, he denied it; although not objecting to said exterminations on moral grounds, he stated that such a programme would incur international unpopularity. It is unclear if these statements reflected his genuine views or were tactical justifications designed to not upset potential NF voters.

Tyndall presented himself as an agnostic although expressed admiration for what he claimed were the moral values of Christianity. Tyndall called for a "complete moral regeneration of the national life". He objected to homosexuality and advocated for it to be outlawed, writing that "the literary and artistic products of the homosexual mind can only flourish in a society where heterosexual values have been gravely weakened." He expressed the view that the NF "was itself by no means immune to this sickening cult" and he disapproved of the presence of homosexuals in the party. Under Tyndall, the BNP called for the re-criminalisation of homosexual activity.

Personal life

American journalist George Thayer, who met with Tyndall in the 1960s, described him as being "blonde and balding" with "cold, evasive eyes". Thayer stated that Tyndall "had not the slightest spark of humour. He was suspicious, nervous and excitable and moved with all the stiffness of a Prussian in Court." In his study of the National Front, the journalist Martin Walker described Tyndall as giving off "an impression of absolute, if brittle, self control". Nigel Fielding, another to have studied the NF, described Tyndall as "a rather small man with a hard, unlined face and pale blue eyes. His movements are abrupt and energetic and he speaks in a loud voice with a clipped inflection." Walker described him as having a "keen political mind", with a "concern for organisation ndmeticulous planning". Tyndall lived a life of temperance and regular exercise, and—according to Walker—his early morning runs had "long been a joke in Nationalist circles".

Thurlow thought that Tyndall's oratorical style was learned from Mosley's example, while Trilling instead believed that it was based on that of Hitler. According to Trilling, Tyndall's "speeches were pompous but studied… ecopied the hand gestures, the rising delivery that ended in a crescendo of angry epithets rom Hitler�� But it was flat and tedious, like a provincial PE teacher trying to show his bored pupils how the rugby or football greats might have done it." After Tyndall's death, the BNP spokesman Phil Edwards said that "he was a marvellous speaker. He could hold a room and mesmerise them, but he did not have the answer to the problems." Copsey stated that "Tyndall may have been a rousing speaker, but his tactical intelligence and vision left much to be desired". The East London BNP activist Eddy Butler noted that at a 1986 party rally in Dewsbury, Tyndall "lost them completely. He knew how to talk to a small room of nationalists, but he didn't know how to talk to a thousand Yorkshire young geezers. He hadn't got a clue about normal people or normal politics. He'd go on about the Britain of Sir Francis Drake; you'd think 'what's he on about?'".

Walker described Tyndall as being "very close to his mother", with whom he lived until 1977. On 19 November 1977, he married Valerie Dawn Olliff, a divorcée and fellow right-wing activist. The couple had a daughter named Marina. Valerie died on 24 June 2011 in Hove.

Reception

Walker noted that during the 1960s, Tyndall was "well known" yet "unpopular within Nationalist circles because of his arrogance, his overbearing personal manner and the way he brought the authoritarianism of his politics into his personal life". In contrast, Fielding noted that within the NF of the late 1970s and early 1980s, Tyndall's standing among "ordinary members" was "very high", with some of them even chanting his name during his speeches. At Tyndall's death, the anti-fascist activist Nick Lowles stated that Tyndall had been "someone that the more hardline nationalists" in the BNP "have always looked up to and rallied around" and that he "still had a lot of support" in the party, particularly in the North West and parts of south London. Despite his standing within the British far-right, ''The Telegraph'' noted that Tyndall's devotion to neo-Nazism "prevented his cause from acquiring the slightest veneer of political respectability."

Elections contested by John Tyndall

Bibliography

References

Footnotes

Sources

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External links

Recent BNP arrests
BBC report 14 December 2004


''The Guardian'', 8 April 2005
* ''The Guardian'
"Obituary of John Tyndall"
19 July 2005
* ''BNP News'' 19 July 2005

{{DEFAULTSORT:Tyndall, John
1934 births
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Antisemitism in England
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English conspiracy theorists
English far-right politicians
English neo-Nazis
British Holocaust deniers
English politicians convicted of crimes
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Leaders of political parties in the United Kingdom
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Politicians from Exeter