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Colin Jordan

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Colin Jordan
Jordan and Françoise Dior on their wedding day (1963).
3rd Leader of the World Union of National Socialists
In office
1968 – 9 April 2009 (41 years)
Preceded byMatt Koehl
Succeeded byMatt Koehl
Leader of the British Movement
In office
1962 – 1975 (13 years)
Preceded byPosition established
(Was formerly the leader of the National Socialist Movement)
Succeeded byMichael McLaughlin
Leader of the National Socialist Movement in the United Kingdom
In office
1962 – 1968 (6 years)
Preceded byPosition established
Succeeded byPosition abolished
(Succeeded by leadership of the British Movement)
Personal details
Born
John Colin Campbell Jordan

(1923-06-19)19 June 1923
Birmingham, England
Died9 April 2009(2009-04-09) (aged 85)
Pateley Bridge, North Yorkshire, England
Political partyBritish Peoples Party
British Movement
British National Party
National Socialist Movement
Spouse(s)Françoise Dior (m. 5 October 1963; div. October 1967)
Julianna Safrany[1]
(dates unknown)
ResidencePateley Bridge
Alma materSidney Sussex College, Cambridge
OccupationTeacher, politician, activist, writer

John Colin Campbell Jordan (19 June 1923 – 9 April 2009) was a leading figure in post-war neo-Nazism in Great Britain. In the far-right circles of the 1960s, Jordan represented the most explicitly "Nazi" inclination in his open use of the styles and symbols of the Third Reich. Through his leadership of organisations such as the National Socialist Movement and the World Union of National Socialists, Jordan advocated a pan-Aryan "Universal Nazism". Although later unaffiliated with any political party, Jordan remained an influential voice on the British far right.

Early life

The son of a lecturer, Percy Jordan and a teacher, Bertha Jordan,[2] Jordan was educated at the Warwick School from 1934 to 1942. During the Second World War, he attempted to enlist in the Fleet Air Arm and the RAF, but after failing the tests for membership in both, he enlisted in the Royal Army Educational Corps.[3] Demobilised in 1946, he went on to study at Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge, graduating in 1949 with second class honours in History (B.A. (Hist. Hons)).[1][4] During the same year, he became a teacher at the Stoke Secondary Modern Boys School, Coventry,[4] where he taught mathematics. In 1953 he received his M.A. He joined the League of Empire Loyalists and became its Midlands organiser.[5]

At Cambridge Jordan formed a Nationalist Club,[6] from which he was invited to join the short-lived British Peoples Party, a group of former British Union of Fascists members led by Lord Tavistock, heir to the Duke of Bedford.[7] After World War Two Jordan joined the British League of Ex-Servicemen and Women a pro-fascist group led by Sir Oswald Mosley's secretary Jeffrey Hamm [8] but Jordan soon became associated with Arnold Leese and was left with a house in Leese's will, which became the Notting Hill[6] base of operations when Jordan launched the White Defence League in 1956.[9] Jordan would later merge this party with the National Labour Party to form the British National Party in 1960,[10] although he would split from this party after a quarrel with John Bean, who was opposed to Jordan's advocacy of National Socialism.

Leading activist

Jordan then founded the National Socialist Movement in 1962 (this group was later renamed the British Movement in 1968) with John Tyndall as its leader. A meeting in Trafalgar Square on 2 July 1962[11] of supporters was disrupted by opponents who Jordan described as being "Jews and Communists",[12] leading to a riot. He was dismissed by the board of governors from the Coventry school where he taught[6] in August 1962, after a period of suspension[13] which had begun after the events in Trafalgar Square.[11]

In August 1962, Jordan hosted an international conference of National Socialists at Guiting Power in Gloucestershire. This resulted in the formation of the World Union of National Socialists, and Jordan was the commander of its European section throughout the 1960s, and he was also elected "World Führer" with George Lincoln Rockwell, founder of the American Nazi Party as his deputy.[14] On 16 August, Jordan and Tyndall, together with Martin Webster, Denis Pirie and Roland Kerr-Ritchie were charged under the Public Order Act 1936 with attempting to set up a paramilitary force[15] called the Spearhead, which was modeled on the SA of Nazi Germany. Undercover police observed Jordan leading the group in military manoeuvres.[16] He was sentenced to nine months imprisonment in October 1962.[6][17]

In October 1963, while John Tyndall was still in prison, Jordan, who had just been released, married Tyndall's fiancée, Françoise Dior, the former wife of a French nobleman and the niece of the French fashion designer Christian Dior. This hasty marriage, on 5 October 1963, was ostensibly to prevent her deportation as an undesirable alien. When Tyndall was eventually released, the marriage caused friction, and he split with Jordan in 1964 to form the Greater Britain Movement. Jordan's marriage to Dior proved short-lived though, and she announced the couple's separation in January 1964. Jordan, she claimed, had become "bourgeois".[18]

During the Leyton by-election of 1965, Jordan led a group of about 100 fascist demonstrators at a public Labour Party meeting, and after taking to the stage to berate the audience, he was punched by Denis Healey, the-then Secretary of State for Defence.[19] The fracas came about because the far-right was using the by-election to stir up interracial hatred in order to defeat the Labour candidate (and Foreign Secretary) Patrick Gordon-Walker. He had previously been defeated in the 1964 general election in the Smethwick constituency after racist campaigning tactics[20] were employed by Colin Jordan and his followers.[21] Specifically, Jordan claimed that his group produced the much publicised "If you want a nigger for a neighbour, vote Liberal or Labour" slogan and launched the campaign to circulate the posters and stickers which the slogan was written on; in the past Jordan's group had also written and circulated other campaign slogans, such as: "Don't vote – a vote for Tory, Labour or Liberal is a vote for more Blacks!".[22] The successful Conservative candidate was Peter Griffiths, who did little to condemn the campaign. On 25 January 1967, Jordan was sentenced to eighteen months in prison at Devon Assizes in Exeter for breaking the Race Relations Act 1965 by circulating material that was likely to cause racial hatred.[23] At the same time, Jordan was prosecuted and convicted under the Public Order Act 1936 for distributing a leaflet titled "The Coloured Invasion", "a vituperative attack on black and Asian people".[6][23]

In September 1972, Jordan was fined for disorderly behaviour at Heathrow airport when, after protesting against the arrival of Ugandan Asians into Britain, he addressed airport staff through a loudspeaker, urging them to strike in protest against mass immigration from Uganda.[24]

Jordan reorganised the National Socialist Movement as the British Movement in 1968, but in 1974 he was obliged to step down from its leadership in favour of Michael McLaughlin. His demise was further accelerated by his arrest for shoplifting three pairs of women's red knickers from Tesco's Leamington Spa[19] branch in June 1975. Magistrates fined him £50 for the offence.[1][25]

Later life

Jordan maintained ties to groups led by Eddy Morrison and Kevin Watmough, such as the White Nationalist Party and the British People's Party as well as the American National Socialist Workers Party. In 2000, he expressed scepticism over the efforts of the British National Party to soften its hard right stance.

In the 1980s, Jordan revived Gothic Ripples, originally Leese's publication, as his personal political project.[26] He once declared that there was "no reliable evidence whatsoever" that six million Jews died in the Holocaust.[25] In 1989, he stated his belief that Jesus was "counterfeit", and Adolf Hitler was the real "messiah" and "saviour", whose eventual "resurrection" would make him "the spiritual conqueror of the future".[25] Democracy, he thought, was really a form of dictatorship because it prevented the defence of the Aryan people.[27]

Jordan was back in court in 2001, after being charged with publishing racist literature, but the judge ruled that his serious heart condition made him unfit to stand trial.[25]

Colin Jordan died at his Pateley Bridge home on 9 April 2009.[25]

Works

  • Gothic Ripples Newsletter
  • Fraudulent Conversion: The Myth of Moscow’s Change (1955)
  • The Coloured Invasion (1967)
  • Merrie England— 2,000 (1993)
  • National Socialism: Vanguard of the Future, Selected Writings of Colin Jordan (1993, ISBN 87-87063-40-9)
  • The Uprising 2004

References

  1. ^ a b c Gerry Gable Obituary: Colin Jordan, The Guardian, 13 April 2009
  2. ^ Jackson, Paul; Colin Jordan and Britain's Neo-Nazi Movement: Hitler's Echo, Bloomsbury Publishing, 2017, p.6.
  3. ^ Martin Walker, The National Front, Fontana/Collins, 1977, p. 27
  4. ^ a b "The day a Coventry fascist gave Nazi salutes near the Cathedral", Coventry Telegraph, 30 September 2009
  5. ^ Goodrick-Clarke (2001), pp. 32-33
  6. ^ a b c d e "Colin Jordan: leader of the far Right". The Times. 16 April 2009. Retrieved 9 November 2017. (subscription required)
  7. ^ Stephen L. Frost, Twaz a Good Fight: The Life of Colin Jordan, NS Press UK (2014), pp. 29-34
  8. ^ Stephen L. Frost, Twaz a Good Fight: The Life of Colin Jordan, NS Press UK (2014), pp. 25-27
  9. ^ Sykes, Alan The Radical Right in Britain Palgrave (2005), p99
  10. ^ Sykes, Alan The Radical Right in Britain Palgrave (2005), p100
  11. ^ a b "Leader of British National Socialists Suspended From Teaching Job", Canadian Jewish Chronicle, 13 July 1962, p.7
  12. ^ Transcript of interview with Jordan, MIdlands News, ATV, 5 July 1962,[permanent dead link] Media Archive for Central England website.
  13. ^ "Colin Jordan to Lose Teaching Job", Glasgow Herald, 30 August 1962
  14. ^ Sykes, Alan The Radical Right in Britain Palgrave (2005), p101
  15. ^ Goodrick-Clarke (2001), p. 38
  16. ^ David Botsford "British Fascism and the Measures Taken Against It By the British State" (.pdf file)
  17. ^ "Jail Ordered For 4 Britons", Spokane Daily Chronicle, 15 October 1962
  18. ^ "Mrs Jordan Confirms Separation", The Age (Melbourne, Australia), 9 January 1964, p.3
  19. ^ a b Obituary: Colin Jordan, Daily Telegraph, 27 April 2009
  20. ^ Clayton Goodwin "'If you want a nigger for a neighbour vote Liberal or Labour'", New African, October 2004 as reproduced on the Find Articles website
  21. ^ Jackson, Paul (2016). Colin Jordan and Britain's Neo-Nazi Movement: Hitler's Echo. Bloomsbury Academic. p. 129. ISBN 1472509315.
  22. ^ Jackson, Paul (2016). Colin Jordan and Britain's Neo-Nazi Movement: Hitler's Echo. Bloomsbury Academic. p. 129.
  23. ^ a b "Colin Jordan Sent to Prison for 18 Months on Race Act Charges", The Glasgow Herald, 26 January 1967, p.7
  24. ^ Alexander Baron, THE LIFE AND "CRIMES" OF JOHN COLIN CAMPBELL JORDAN, 3rd edition (1995), p 10, citing "Colin Jordan fined over airport protest", The Times, 14 September 1972, page 4. Retrieved 27 March 2020.
  25. ^ a b c d e David McKittrick "Obituary: Colin Jordan", The Independent 28 April 2009.
  26. ^ Griffin (1995), p. 325
  27. ^ Colin Jordan "National Vanguard ~ Part 1 - Democracy Brings the Police State" Archived 15 April 2009 at the Wayback Machine, Gothic Ripples, Issue 22-23 [c.1994]

Further reading

Wikiquote has quotations related to Colin Jordan.
  • Guardian obituary
  • Colin Jordan - Daily Telegraph obituary
  • [1] - BBC Panorama documentary about the White Defence League featuring an interview with Colin Jordan
  • [2] - British Pathe film footage of the wedding of Colin Jordan and Francoise Dior
  • [3] - BBC Panorama report on the Leyton By-Election featuring Colin Jordan
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