Colin Jordan

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John Colin Campbell Jordan

Colin Jordan
Born June 1923
Occupation Teacher, politician, activist, writer
Spouse Françoise Dior

John Colin Campbell Jordan (born June 1923) was a leading representative of postwar National Socialism in Britain and around the world. In the far-right nationalist circles of the 1960s, Jordan represented the most explicitly 'Nazi' inclination in his open use of the styles and symbols of the Third Reich.

Through organizations such as the National Socialist Movement and the World Union of National Socialists, Jordan advanced a pan-Aryan "Universal Nazism".

Although now unaffiliated with any political party, Jordan remains a voice on the British extreme right.

Contents

[edit] Biography

The son of a postman, Jordan was educated at Warwick School from 1934 to 1942, and then Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge, graduating with 2nd class honours in history. He then became a mathematics teacher at a Coventry grammar school where he earned the nickname of "Jumbo" by the pupils. He joined the League of Empire Loyalists and became their Midlands organizer.[1]

At Cambridge Jordan had formed a "Nationalist Club", from where he was invited to join the short-lived British Peoples Party, a group of former British Union of Fascists members led by Lord Tavistock, heir to the Duke of Bedford. Jordan soon became associated with Arnold Leese and was left a property in Leese's will, which became the base of operations when Jordan launched the White Defence League in 1958. Jordan would later merge this party with the National Labour Party to form the British National Party in 1960, although he would split from this after a quarrel with John Bean, who felt that Jordan's open National Socialism was a bar to progress.

As a result he founded the National Socialist Movement (1962, later becoming the British Movement in 1968) along with John Tyndall. In August 1962, Jordan hosted an international conference of National Socialists in Gloucestershire resulting in the formation of the World Union of National Socialists (of which Jordan was the commander of its European section throughout the 1960s). On 16 August, Jordan and Tyndall (among others) were charged under the Public Order Act with attempts to set up a paramilitary force[2] called Spearhead.

In the Leyton byelection of 1965 Jordan was punched at a public meeting by Denis Healey, then Secretary of State for Defence. The fracas came about because the far right were using the byelection to stir up racist hatred after the Labour candidate (and Foreign Secretary) Patrick Gordon-Walker had been defeated in the October 1964 general election in Smethwick after racist campaigning.

In October 1963, while John Tyndall was still in prison, Jordan, who had just been released, married Tyndall's fiancée, Françoise Dior, the former wife of a French nobleman and the niece of the French fashion designer Christian Dior. When Tyndall was eventually released, he split with Jordan in 1964 to form the Greater Britain Movement.

In the 1980s, Jordan revived Gothic Ripples, originally Leese's publication, as his personal mouthpiece.[3]

Jordan remains a voice on the British extreme right and, although he is no longer affiliated to any party, he has maintained ties to Eddy Morrison-led groups such as the White Nationalist Party and the British Peoples Party as well as the American National Socialist Workers Party. He lives in the North Yorkshire countryside, near Harrogate.

[edit] Works

[edit] References

  1. ^ Goodrick-Clarke (2001), pp. 32-33
  2. ^ Goodrick-Clarke (2001), p. 38
  3. ^ Griffin (1995), p. 325

[edit] Literature

  • Schmaltz, William H. (2000). Hate: George Lincoln Rockwell and the American Nazi Party. Potomac Books. ISBN 1-57488-262-7. 
  • Sandbrook, Dominic (2006). White Heat: a history of Britain in the swinging sixties. Little, Brown. ISBN 0-316-72452-1. 

[edit] External links

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