Who was it that said............ ?

Hand in hand with such an attitude often goes a call to downplay certain particularly controversial issues. However minor are such changes, their likely result is to convince a number of ideologically motivated 'hard-liners' - in all probability just the kind of energetic and enthusiastic youngsters who are most needed - that there is no place for them in the new-look movement. If the changes do not produce the expected crop of more 'respectable' recruits, the organisation is thus left weakened. If, on the other hand, a new wave of slightly more moderate members does join up and become active, their presence will have a ratchet effect.

When they find that they are still attacked by the media, they will look around for further changes they could make to make the organisation more acceptable. This is precisely the spiral of sickly moderation which has led one failed nationalist splinter group after another to purge itself of 'extremists', co-opt Winston Churchill as a posthumous honorary member and finally drop the inconvenient commitment to compulsory repatriation just before its last members totter off to rejoin the Tory Party.

"The long and unbroken record of failure by all who have followed this populist road is irrefutable evidence that it is a dead end."


Well actually it was Nick Griffin (Spearhead, February 1996)

Pip pip