White Defence League - Activities

Activities

The WDL gained notoriety after members of the group were widely reported in the press as having taken part in the 1958 Notting Hill race riots. Indeed during that summer the WDL held rallies through immigrant neighbourhoods on a nightly basis. Towards the end of the riots Antiguan immigrant Kelso Cochrane was murdered and local black opinion often suggested that the WDL was responsible although ultimately no one was arrested for the killing. Like the Union Movement, which was also active in the local area, the WDL co-operated with gangs of racist Teddy boys who harassed and launched attacks on blacks in the area. Indeed in the run-up to the riots followers of the Union Movement and the WDL had came into immigrant neighbourhoods in the area to indulge in what they called "nigger hunts".

In 1959 the WDL began to co-operate with the National Labour Party, a group led by another former LEL dissident John Bean which was also active in Notting Hill. The WDL helped Bean's group with their election campaigns and the two groups held a joint rally called Stop the Coloured Invasion in Trafalgar Square in May 1959 with banners that read Keep Britain White. The monitors at the rally wore white armbands emblazoned with a black sun wheel, the symbol of the Aryan race. The sun wheel symbol was used as the symbol of White Defence League. Jordan, who had developed a network of international contacts through The Nationalist, impressed both Bean and Andrew Fountaine and in February 1960 the two groups fused to form the British National Party, which was also to be based at Arnold Leese House.