THERE ARE THOSE who will attribute the current successes of the British National Party to its more moderate approach under its "new management".  John Tyndall, who founded the BNP as a breakaway from the National Front in 1982, contends that "moderation" has nothing to do with its electoral successes but is a result of the British people at last waking up to the betrayal of their country: an awakening that has been accelerated by the "asylum seeker" flood.  Those who think that Tyndall takes the uncompromising stand that he does because he is not as clever as the modernisers, should read this monumental work.  This is the work of a first class brain.  The work of a man of integrity and honesty who will not compromise on what he considers to be the path we should take to preserve the continuance of the British race and nation.  Whether or not we may have tactical differences with him – as this reviewer has – is a secondary matter, as is the fact that his book shows that he offers only a modicum of innovative thought: after all, it is a defence of the British Imperium, as is his whole life’s work.

Someone once said that he is like an old oak in the forest who will be blown down by the changing winds of fashionable opinions, which the younger willows can bend to and thereby survive.  He is not an oak: he is an immovable rock.  Only time can remove him, and at 68 this is something that he is aware of.  I say this as someone who has known him since he first came into radical right politics 45 years ago.  His family believes that he is directly descended from William Tyndale (1490-1536), the religious reformer and first publisher of the English Bible, who spent much of his life embroiled in the flames of controversy and was eventually burnt at the stake.  Yes, he must be related!

Readers in Ulster and the rest of Ireland will be interested to know that John Tyndall’s forbears settled in Ireland in the 17^th century. His great-great uncle was Professor John Tyndall (1820-93), physicist, natural philosopher and spare-time mountaineer.  His great-grandfather and grandfather were members of the Royal Irish Constabulary, the latter being a District Inspector, when the family moved to the North (Portadown).  Needless to say, they were strong Unionists, which is reflected in his own beliefs.  For example, on page 377 he states:
"..there cannot possibly be compromise between two groups of people who cling to two different and conflicting national allegiances, one of which wants to belong to one nation and the other to belong to another nation. Northern Ireland is either British or it is not British; it cannot be half-British and half something else. And it is a complete nonsense to say that politicians in Northern Ireland whose allegiance is to the United Kingdom can be expected to sit down at the same table as politicians whose allegiance is to what is, by their own choice, a foreign state."

On this same page where he defines his early feelings on the interconnection between race and nation, Tyndall makes a significant point in view of the differences between him and the BNP’s present "modernisers" on the question of accepting those people of non-European stock as permanent residents of the UK.  As Tyndall will not commit himself to this – although impending European race legislation may force him to do so, he has been accused of "race hatred".  Yet in 1958, according to his book, he believed that his views "in no way incorporated any feelings of hatred towards other races…, but merely a dedication to my own race first".  My view exactly.

In Chapter 15, The Racial Controversy, he defines this further with the comment:
"..Arguments as to superiority and inferiority become a rather pointless exercise.  All that can be established at the present time is that the differences between Whites and non-Whites in mental outlook, character, temperament and cultural tradition are vast, and, in my submission, insurmountable – therefore pointing to the impossibility of ever integrating them into a single harmonious society."

It would surprise some people, therefore, to know that John Tyndall was imprisoned for six months in 1986 for publishing an article in his Spearhead magazine (still going strong) that was likely to cause hatred.  Perhaps this was a result of his giving sway to his forthrightness and not taking enough caution to making it clear that his criticisms of some immigrants did not apply to all of them. He does make this clear on page 348:
"The truth is that hatred does not come into the issue at all….We have no hostile feelings towards members of other races; different individuals among those races are agreeable or disagreeable, just as is the case with our own white people.  Our whole position on the race issue is based on the recognition of differences.  With those Asians or Blacks who recognise these differences as we do and wish to co-operate with us in bringing about the peaceful separation of the races that is the only solution to the problem, we have no quarrel, and we are prepared to enter into amicable negotiation with them at any time.  In fact, in the case of our party some small co-operation has already begun with members of a black group seeking repatriation from these shores."

The "racial controversy" forms only part of John Tyndall’s book.  Much is taken up by his views on Britain’s role in the world.  There are those who contend that our future is as an appendage of the USA, if not in name.  Other see us as part of a Federal Europe.  A few others, including the reviewer, see us as trying to strengthen our ties with the old white Commonwealth (including Ireland) and joining a European Confederation of sovereign states.  Tyndall looks to a union of the White Commonwealth as a "coalition of free peoples".  Some patriotic radical right writers and activists in the old Commonwealth nations, Australians in particular, have objected to this on the grounds that we would be looking at them as giant quarries to supply our mineral needs and that it would return them to colonial status.  Tyndall exposes this myth in Chapter 17, The Imperial Imperative.  The following extracts are particularly important.

In thoroughly recommending this book to all those looking for alternative political thinking, I would make just two minor criticisms. There is a certain amount of repetition, which can be explained by the fact that it has been updated several times since John Tyndall scribbled his first draft in his prison cell.  Secondly, as Spearhead readers will know, he does use three words where he could get away with two!