By 1976, the National Front could claim around 14,000 dues-paying members. At the West Bromwich by-election in May 1973, the NF turned heads by scoring over 10 percent in what had been a safe Labour seat.Д«ritish fascism was making itself relevant, taking advantage of rapid demographic shifts and latent racial prejudices. The following year, the party made a conscious shift towards a working class constituency, embracing a slew of left-protectionist economic policies and establishing a National Front Trade Unionists Association. As the seventies continued, it grew dramatically, benefiting from national political unrest, escalating conflict in the north of Ireland, and its own activist work вЂ“ such as the campaign to resist the entrance of Ugandan Asian refugees into Britain in 1972. The following two years saw a steady growth in NF membership, as well as slew of defections by lower-profile but important local Conservative Party functionaries.Д«y 1970, the NF was prepared to field 84 candidates in the general election, averaging a modest but significant 5.2 percent of the vote. With fascist rhetoric in the mainstream, the National Front capitalised вЂ“ particularly when it became clear that PowellвЂ™s speech had achieved some resonance with white workers in Britain.ДЇascist leader John Tyndall, who would later go on to chair the National Front, predicted that they, and not the Tories, would be the beneficiaries of Powellism вЂ“ and was swiftly proven correct. This changed in April 1968 with the infamous вЂRivers of BloodвЂ™ speech by hard-right Conservative MP Enoch Powell. Lacking in coherence and unable to demonstrate in public, the NF struggled to develop into a politically meaningful force on the right wing of British politics. However, from those who remembered the threat posed by even fledgling fascist forces, the NF faced serious disruption from the beginning вЂ“ including Jewish self-defence organisations such as the 62 Group. A merger of various fascist sects-the League of Empire Loyalists, the Greater Britain Movement, the Racial Preservation Society-it was widely considered a way station for crankier elements left out by Oswald MosleyвЂ™s British Union. In the years following their establishment in February 1967, the National Front (NF) wasnвЂ™t taken seriously as a political party. A year before, in a local council election, the far right had secured almost half the vote вЂ“ the stage seemed set for a foothold in BritainвЂ™s capital.

Against a backdrop of deep economic crisis, its aim was to intimidate the local black community and provoke conflict. On this day in 1977, the National Front attempted to organise a national demonstration through Lewisham, a multi-racial area of southeast London.

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