Constitutional Movement - Formation

Formation

Within the National Front in the late 1970s there was a growing disaffection with the leadership of John Tyndall and his associate Martin Webster and in particular their adherence to neo-Nazi principles rather than what the critics believed to be the vote-winning alternative of a more populist British nationalism. Already by 1978 Andrew Fountaine had become the focal point for a number of members of the anti-Tyndall faction and their position was strengthened by the 1979 general election in which the NF put forward the greatest number of candidates in its history but failed to make any headway with the electorate.

The party was born in a time of serious division in the British far right and competed with a number of other parties for attention. Such was the confusion at the time that party operations were even based at Excalibur House (London, EC2), which continued to be the HQ of the main NF. Fountaine had split from the NF in opposition to what he claimed was the increasing Nazism amongst the leadership, the encouragment of links with violent subcultures such as football hooliganism and Nazi skinheads as well as a strong current of homosexuality which he claimed existed amongst the leadership. The new party ambitiously launched itself as an alternative to the Conservaitve Party and hoped to win votes and members from the right-wing of the Tories. Like the British Democratic Party, which broke away from the NF at the time, the party sought to distance itself from the vote-losing open Nazism that both groups associated with John Tyndall, Martin Webster and the other leaders of the NF. The Movement produced its own newspaper, Frontline News as well as a magazine Excalibur, the latter edited by Terry Savage, a veteran of the National Labour Party.