The National Socialist Group: a case study in the groupuscular right

This chapter explores the history of a short-lived British neo-Nazi groupuscule the National Socialist Group. It draws on new archival sources, now available at the University of Northampton’s Searchlight Archive, to generate analysis of the National Socialist Group’s formation in 1968; its attempts to develop into a substantial organization promoting a National Socialist lifestyle and culture; its limited successes in joining with international activists, such as the World Union of National Socialists; and its eventual demise by the end of 1969. Letters, membership data, internal briefings, publications and other material produced by the group during its lifetime are used to develop a picture of the clandestine organization’s inner dynamics, and ultimate failings. The chapter also explores how the National Socialist Group’s leading activists sought to carve out a unique position for the organization in the changing arena of extreme right political groups in late 1960s Britain. The chapter concludes that, although in itself a tiny and largely inconsequential organization, the National Socialist Group needs to be placed in a much longer history of such neo-Nazi groups promoting revolution and violence in Britain.