| John O'brien (uk Politician) |
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Initially a member of the Conservative Party , O'Brien was a supporter of Enoch Powell , and left the Tories to join the British National Front (following a brief stop-over in the National Democratic Party ) after Powell's dismissal from the Shadow Cabinet . Following internal wranglings within the party, O'Brien was appointed leader of the NF in 1970, following the removal (& resignation) of A. K. Chesterton (who had brought O'Brien in to be NF Office Manager). Initially seen as a compromise candidate (after the rebellion against Chesterton, no one was willing to take the post), he soon set about trying to modernise the party and clashed with John Tyndall and Martin Webster over the issue, who had backed the O'Brien candidacy because they thought erroneously that he could be easily manipulated. O'Brien and his supporters - appalled at the extent to which a small neo-nazi clique around Tyndall had taken over most of the facets of the party - failed to win the struggle and they left to join John Davis' National Independence Party as a group. The NIP failed to gain any momentum - although they famously beat former Tory candidate turned National Front candidate Roy Painter in Tottenham at the February 1974 General Election (despite his campaign enjoying a "campaign diary" spot during the election with '' The Guardian '') - and struggled on until 1976 when it was closed down. O'Brien did not return to the political arena after this, & died suddenly at the end of the 1970s. Ironically, the former leader of the NF can claim to have made one of the most significant blows against neo-nazism in post-war Britain. His involvement with the "This Week" documentary on ITV about the NF (Thames Television, ITV, September 1974 - where he was also interviewed at length about the party he left whilst its chairman) caused immense damage to the National Front & instigated fury within the party's ordinary members that they had not been made aware as to the full extent of the neo-nazi pasts (and continuing links) by the likes of John Tyndall and Martin Webster (who made things worse by trying to make a joke about the NF's repatriation policy, "we're not intending to shove them out on the first banana boat!"). Within one month of the broadcast, Tyndall was fired as NF Chairman. O' Brien briefly returned to take a role in the ). |
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