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Revision as of 15:04, 13 May 2014 by Emeraude (talk | contribs) (Expanded)(diff) ← Previous revision | Latest revision (diff) | Newer revision → (diff)Graham Williamson is a long-time far right activist in the United Kingdom, having been active at the top levels of fascist and far right groups including the National Front, the Third Way andSolidarity, Most recently, he is a leading member of the National Liberal Party which contested the 2014 European Parliament election with eight candidates in the London constituency election being held in May 2014.
Williamson is also a director of the Human Rights Campaign group ACT NOW. He is a former British humanitarian aid worker in Sri Lanka and founded ACT NOW with fellow aid workers after seeing human rights violations and mass killings directed against the Tamil population.
Political background
Williamson is a former deputy chairman of the National Front and a member of the executive of the British National Party (BNP)-supported "trade union" Solidarity. With Patrick Harrington, he founded the National Liberal Party in 1999.
Harrington is the staff manager for the BNP leader Nick Griffin and a former leading figure in the National Front, and general secretary of Solidarity. They have run a nationalist think tank for more than twenty years called the Third Way, named after the third-positionist strategies influenced by the ideology of Roberto Fiore, an Italian fascist. Third-positionist ideas were a great influence on the "political soldier" faction of the Nationa Front, which included Williamson, Harrington and Griffin.
Among Fiore's ideas was that far right white nationalist groups should form alliances with national liberation movements and separatists. Williamson and Harrington pioneered this in the National Front in the 1980s, but apart from allowing them to say they were not racists because they had black allies, the policy was not a success. The National Liberal Party has kept up this strategy, appealing for ethnic minority votes by focusing on national struggles abroad and with particular emphasis on injustices in Sri Lanka and India.
Despite the far right and fascist backgrounds of its leaders, the party is contesting elections in London on a multicultural election list including Tamil, Sikh and Kurdish candidates. The party manifesto gives no indication of its far right origins. It says, "The National Liberal Party is putting forward a team of 8 ethnically and racially diverse candidates – Tamil, Sikh, Azerbaijan, Kurdish, English, north Borneo (sabah-sarawak), to represent the real grassroots London."
References
- Regional Returning Officer for London, Statement of parties and individual candidates nominated and Notice of Poll, published 28 April 2014
- Act now
- Four Hundred Tons of Medical Aid Sets Sail for Sri Lanka
- Self-polls of Tamils make contrast to State-polls of Sri Lanka
- ACT NOW JOINS HUMAN RIGHTS GROUPS
- Blood garments protests in London
- ^ Channel 4 News, "Exposed: far-right veteran seeking London multicultural vote ", posted in Searchlight, 3 May 2014