British Movement - Post-Jordan

Post-Jordan

After Jordan stood down as leader of the BM Michael McLaughlin, a former milkman from Liverpool, became the leader. McLaughlin, who was seen as a talented organiser but weak leader, was largely believed to have been chosen as little more than a "front" leader who could be controlled by Jordan from behind the scenes. McLaughlin quickly rejected this notion and made it clear that Jordan's time was over, resulting in the former leader retiring to Yorkshire from where he still published his own journal Gothic Ripples from time to time, the pages of which were regularly filled with criticism of McLaughlin.

McLaughlin, in contrast to Jordan, was under no delusions that the BM might gain a broad following and instead he felt that its best area of possible support was amongst young, working-class males. The BM journals, The Phoenix and British Patriot, thus changed to become much more simplistic and aggressive publications largely shorn of Jordan's pseudoscientific racialism in favour of more basic notions. The BM had also gained some publicity in 1976 when "race martyr" and sometime party activist Robert Relf went on hunger strike in protest at the Race Relations Bill but this proved short-lived as Tyndall quickly signed Relf up to the NF. Relf hado gained national attention after he advertised his house as being "For Sale - to a white family only". Meanwhile McLaughlin's baser ideas struck a chord with the growing White power skinhead movement and large numbers of these youths, many of whom were involved in regular acts of violence against non-Whites, flocked to the BM.Indeed by 1980 it claimed to have 4000 members and 25 branches. The notion of recruiting violent youths to form a street army appealed to Martin Webster who attempted to coax members away from the BM to the NF but the BM only lost a handful of members in this manner before NF leader John Tyndall, mindful of the desire to present a respectable NF image, called a halt to the scheme. A key strategy for gaining publicity and members was by encouraging violence at football matches and concerts. Nicky Crane, one of the leading figures of the neo-Nazi skinhead movement, joined the BM and became an organiser in Kent. By this time the BM had effectively given up mainstream politics in favour of provocative marches and violence, changes that appealed to the younger element who were disillusioned with the disintegrating NF.