Activities
The party's early activities were hamstrung by a lack of money and so they were restricted to the sort of headline grabbing that had been the stock-in-trade of the WDL. These included demonstrating at railway stations where immigrant-carrying trains were arriving, holding a counter-demonstration to one organised by the Anti-Apartheid Movement and holding a rally to oppose the Lord Mayor's Show as the presiding Lord Mayor of London, Bernard Waley-Cohen, was Jewish. However the BNP managed to secure an 8.1% share of the vote in Deptford in the 1960 London County Council (LCC) elections, a large result for a new party without name recognition. A National Youth Movement was also organised and this was sponsored by General Sir Richard Hilton, who was leader of his own Patriotic Party. Although rumours circulated at the time that German neo-Nazi groups were funding the BNP there is no evidence to back this up and it seems likely that the party was supported by a mixture of collections held in Trafalgar Square and funds from Fountaine who was personally well-off.
Elements within the party also expressed support for Nazism and a paramilitary arm, Spearhead, was set up by Tyndall. Spearhead had initially been set up as group aimed at establishing the BNP outside London although its very youthful membership soon lent it a more violent character. Colin Jordan, who would later become a fierce critic of Tyndall would later suggest that Spearhead was set up as much to get Tyndall out of the way as anything else. The party also hosted a summer camp on Fountaine's land and this grew into an international event, beginning in 1961 when delegates attended from the National States' Rights Party and the Nordic Reich Party amongst others. In early 1962 Oswald Mosley had approached both Jordan and Bean and had offered them positions as national organisers within his group, which would subsume the BNP. However the plan was rejected as neither man had faith in Mosley whilst the two were increasingly on a collision course within the BNP itself.
Read more about this topic: British National Party (1960)
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