page_title: National Front (UK)
section_title: Government and the state
hierarchical_section_title: National Front (UK) / Ideology / Government and the state
caption_attribution_description: Српски / srpski: Moamer el Gadafi u Beogradu. Foto: Stevan Kragujević (po odobrenju kćerke Tanje Kragujević).
context_page_description: The National Front is a far-right, fascist political party in the United Kingdom. It is currently led by Tony Martin. As a minor party, it has never had its representatives elected to the British or European Parliaments, although it gained a small number of local councillors through defections, and it has had a few of its representatives elected to community councils. Founded in 1967, it reached the height of its electoral support during the mid-1970s, when it was briefly the UK's fourth-largest party in terms of vote share.
  The NF was founded by A. K. Chesterton, formerly of the British Union of Fascists, as a merger between his League of Empire Loyalists and the British National Party. It was soon joined by the Greater Britain Movement, whose leader John Tyndall became the Front's chairman in 1972. Under Tyndall's leadership, it capitalised on growing concern about South Asian migration to Britain, rapidly increasing its membership and vote share in the urban areas of East London and Northern England.
context_section_description: According to Fielding, the NF's commitment to parliamentary democracy was "not ideological but functional." During the 1970s, the Front alleged that the UK's liberal democracy was "bogus democracy" and declared that it would forge "a genuinely democratic political system", introducing public referenda on major issues. In making claims such as that "true democracy is that which is representative of the will of the people", the latter being presented as a monolithic entity, the NF engaged in populist rhetoric. Fielding nevertheless believed that "the essence of the NF ideology is incompatible with democracy" and instead reflects an "elitist tendency" quite at odds with the "populist rhetoric" that it used to promote its message.
  The NF saw democracy as a luxury that was subordinate to the cause of preserving the nation. In Spearhead, Tyndall stated that although he would support parliamentary democracy if he thought it in the national interest, "the survival, and the national recovery of Britain stand as top priority over all. We will support whatever political methods are necessary to attain that end." He called for governance by a strong leader, an individual unencumbered by political parties and elections so that they could focus on the national interest rather than the interests of sub-groups or short-term considerations. In Spearhead, Tyndall stated that "it is only in banana republics, where the 'sophisticated' Western institutions of a multi- or two-party system, powerful trade unions and a 'free' press have not yet taken root, that there is still scope for men of real personality and decision to emerge and truly lead." It also expressed support for the retention of the British monarchy, while Fielding believed that had the NF achieved political office it would have marginalised parliament and governed in a totalitarian manner.
  Under the party's Strasserite leadership during the 1980s, the NF adopted a radically different position on governance, influenced heavily by the Third International Theory propounded by Libya's leader Muammar Gaddafi in The Green Book. It promoted the establishment of communal political structures, with street councils, area councils, county councils, and a National People's Council "for each of the British Nations". In its view of this future, the British population would be armed and trained in military tactics, allowing for the establishment of local militias rather than a state-controlled professional army.
caption: When the Strasserite faction took control of the National Front in the 1980s, it based its views of a future government on the ideas in The Green Book of Muammar Gaddafi (pictured).
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