Decline
As a separate group, the Flag Group contested Bristol East in the 1987 general election. By the Vauxhall by-election, 1989, they had resumed using the National Front name, even though their candidate Ted Budden faced opposition from Official National Front candidate Patrick Harrington. Other elections contested included the Epping Forest by-election of December 1988, the European Parliament election of 1989 in which the West Midlands seat was fought by Wingfield and the Mid-Staffordshire by-election of March 1990 in which the party finished behind even parody candidate Screaming Lord Sutch. This policy of contesting elections, invariably with very disappointing results, left the Flag Group with a significant funding shortage. By 1989 the Flag Group had around 1,500 members with most activity centred on the West Midlands. Another activity centre had been Tower Hamlets although following the failure of the 'Nationalist Alliance' initiative this group, which included future BNP Campaign Director Eddy Butler, switched en bloc to the BNP.
As the 1980s drew to a close, the ONF disintegrated with its place being taken by the International Third Position and the Third Way. This allowed the Flag Group to assume sole control of the name, mantle and traditions of NF and effectively signalled the end of the Flag Group as a name. Soon they would attempt to relaunch the NF as the National Democrats.
Read more about this topic: Flag Group
Famous quotes containing the word decline:
“I rather think the cinema will die. Look at the energy being exerted to revive it—yesterday it was color, today three dimensions. I don’t give it forty years more. Witness the decline of conversation. Only the Irish have remained incomparable conversationalists, maybe because technical progress has passed them by.”
—Orson Welles (1915–1984)
“The chief misery of the decline of the faculties, and a main cause of the irritability that often goes with it, is evidently the isolation, the lack of customary appreciation and influence, which only the rarest tact and thoughtfulness on the part of others can alleviate.”
—Charles Horton Cooley (1864–1929)
“We can recognize the dawn and the decline of love by the uneasiness we feel when alone together.”
—Jean De La Bruyère (1645–1696)