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Ian Anderson (Politician)Ian Anderson (NOT the same person that was leader of the band ]Jethro Tull!) has been a leading figure on the British far-right since the 1980s, although his involvement began in the mid 1970s when he was close to certain elements on the right of the Conservative Party, particularly the Monday Club. Anderson was viewed as a "respectable" figure in right wing circles and spent some time at the University of Oxford on two separate occasions (he failed to graduate - though his election leaflets stated he was 'Oxford-educated'). After the 1982 General Election, the NF started to fracture as a faction led by Nick Griffin and Derek Holland wanted the party to copy the "Third Way" neo-fascist politics gaining in popularity within Europe's far right - noting the rising success of the Italian MSI. Moves were instigated by party chairman Martin Webster to have them thrown out, but before he could the party's Directorate voted to have him and his partner Peter Salt thrown out of the party for mismanagement - the crucial majority vote being secured by Anderson siding with the rebels. Shocked, Webster left politics for good (apart from the occasional half-hearted dabble). What made this even more surprising was that Anderson was seen as a close ally of Webster - the one supporter of John Tyndall that to many people's surprise did not leave to join the British National Party. The story goes that the night before the crucial vote, both Griffin and Holland had visited Anderson at his home, told him what they intended to do. After the previous debacle with Tyndall, they knew that removing his old friend would not be enough - Webster would have to go. It was when they asked him if they thought the party had a chance of getting anywhere so long as Webster was in control that Anderson decided he had no choice but to vote with those he despised in order to buy the NF a stay of execution. Post-Webster, Anderson became associated with the Flag Group wing (named after their newspaper, "The Flag") of the NF - the rivals to Griffin's "Third Way" wing - that sought to turn the NF into a force in political terms through electoral competition. Eventually the two factions battle for control turned ugly - culminating in the Vauxhall by-election fiasco where an NF candidate for each faction stood, splitting what little vote there was and haranguing one another on live TV as the declaration of the results were made. Griffin subsequently won the rights to the NF name in the courts, only to dump it for "Third Way" (which Griffin along with Holland left in turn) months later. Retaking the name (amid sighs of relief from most NF members, who had little interest in the whole Third Way versus Flag Group feud), Anderson gained control of the NF in 1990 and attempted to remodel the party back along the lines of John O'Brien in the early 1970s when they had appeared at one stage to be a potential threat to the mainstream parties. The spur for this was undoubtedly the success of the Front National - a rather blatant copy of the early British one. He had also attempted to gain contacts in the US and in 1989 he'd established a link with Richard Barrett and the Nationalist Movement with a pact known as the New Atlantic Charter. But the failure to gain a mass support base frustrated the NF's ambitions as did the growing competition from the British National Party in what was already a small political space. Anderson soon came to believe that the negative connotations of the National Front name were proving a bar to success and so in 1995 he relaunched the party as the National Democrats, after a postal ballot of the members. How honest the result favouring the name change can be gauged from the fact two thirds of the party joined the continuing National Front run by John McAuley (who was neither cut out nor truly wished to be a party leader, and he was subsequently to leave politics for good) within a month. Anderson maintained contacts in Northern Ireland, particularly within the right of the Ulster Unionist Party and in the 1997 General Election he stood as a candidate for the Londonderry East constituency. Securing a mere 0.2% share of the vote in the constituency, Anderson soon abandoned his Northern Ireland strategy. Anderson quietly gave up the idea of electoral struggle and the National Democrats became the Campaign for National Democracy pressure group, which apart from a few mentions in the Daily Mail, have been largely ignored. He was also involved in setting up the People's Campaign to Keep the Pound, along with Anthony Bennett, the official leader of Robert Kilroy-Silk's Veritas. In 2004, he re-emerged in his new home of Epping to become a figure in community politics and has been praised by a former Labour mayor for his work. Anderson, Ian
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