Ian Anderson (politician) - National Front

National Front

Anderson joined the National Front in the late 1970s and was initially seen as a supporter of National Organiser Martin Webster. However when the Political Soldier faction, led by figures such as Nick Griffin and Derek Holland, moved against Webster and his assistant Michael Salt, Anderson sided with the rebels and used his casting vote to ensure that Webster and Salt were expelled for mismanagement.

Anderson became a close associate of Andrew Brons and, like Brons, largely indulged the Political Soldiers faction, writing for the Third Positionist party magazine Nationalism Today. He also played a leading role in working with Ian Stuart Donaldson to ensure that Rock Against Communism became the province of the NF rather than the British Movement. As Anderson grew in influence within the NF divisions between the faction led by Brons and himself and the Political Soldiers grew, as Anderson was a strong supporter of electoral participation. He became one of the leading figures grouped around the dissident Flag newspaper (edited by Martin Wingfield) and was expelled by the Official National Front along with the rest of his faction in 1986, reconstituting as the Flag Group. The divisions reached a crisis at the Vauxhall by-election in 1989, where an NF candidate for each faction stood (Patrick Harrington and Ted Budden), splitting support and haranguing one another on live TV as the declaration of votes was made. Anderson, nonetheless, became a powerful figure within the Flag Group and by 1990 was effective leader, Andrew Brons having left the political scene.

In 1987, Troy Southgate and Patrick Harrington, acting for the NF's Security and Intelligence Department (SID), photographed Anderson in Stratford, east London, when it was discovered that his printing business was housed in the same building as the offices of Searchlight, an anti-fascist organisation.

With the Official NF having split into the International Third Position and Third Way, Anderson gained control of the NF in 1990 and attempted to remodel the party back along the lines of John O'Brien in the early 1970s when they had appeared at one stage to be a potential threat to the mainstream parties. The spur for this was undoubtedly the success of the Front National. He had also attempted to gain contacts in the United States and in 1989 he had established a link with Richard Barrett and the Nationalist Movement with a pact known as the 'New Atlantic Charter'. Anderson's NF suffered however from the inactivity and in-fighting of the 1980s, whilst the emergence of the British National Party was also a major check on his ambitions as leader.