blackisthelight

Mike McLaughlin and the British Movement

Michael McLaughlin aka Michael (or Mike) Walsh was born in Liverpool to two Irish socialist republican parents. His father was Paddy Roe McLaughlin, an IRA man from Donegal who fought in the War of Independence and on the anti-treaty side in Civil War. Later Paddy volunteered with the International Brigades in the Spanish Civil War with the Connolly Column. Michael’s mother Kathleen Walsh was a friend of La Pasionara (at least according to McLaughlin himself) and had been engaged to Belfast man Liam Tumilson before his death at Jarama during the Spanish Civil War fighting alongside Paddy Roe. Kathleen had been jailed briefly for her antifascist activities in Liverpool during a riotous demonstration in 1937 where Oswald Mosley was hit in the head with a stone. After the Spanish Civil War, the couple settled in Liverpool and became members of the Communist Party of Great Britain. Their son followed their path into revolutionary politics, although his ideology could not have been more different. Michael became a merchant seaman and travelled the world in his twenties developing a fondness for brawling.

McLaughlin was an early member of the British Movement in 1968, a successor to Colin Jordan’s National Socialist Movement. Jordan wound up the NSM due in part to the passing of the Race Relations Act, and the NSM membership passed into the new group which took off their uniforms in a bid to stay legal, but kept the use of the swastika and the open support for Hitler and the Nazis. During his time as the BM Merseyside organiser McLaughlin was convicted of interfering with an election and inciting racial hatred for distributing antisemitic stickers targeting a Jewish MP. The stickers had been printed with McLaughlin’s home address on the bottom.

In 1976 McLaughlin took over from Colin Jordan as leader of the BM after Jordan was caught shoplifting two pairs of bright red women’s underwear from a Tesco supermarket in Coventry. It was an ignominious end to the political life of the World Führer and he stepped aside to allow McLaughlin to take charge. McLaughlin was an uncharismatic leader but a successful organiser and succeeded in growing its membership quickly, claiming about 4,000 at its peak. Following the National Front’s disastrous 1979 general election when Margaret Thatcher stole their ideas and their voters, the NF split into several competing groups and lost its way as an electioneering force. The BM stepped into the breach and mopped up many of the members.

McLaughlin rejected Jordan’s pseudoscientific racialist ideas and promoted a baser overt racist rhetoric which swelled its ranks with racist skinheads and positioned the BM as a defender of the white working class. The BM recruited on marginalised council estates and managed to harness a widespread sense of hopelessness among the youth into violent street gangs that made up a large part of their supporters. The BM developed a reputation for extreme violence against people of colour, and attacks on families and businesses were frequent during this period as the early 80’s gained a reputation for racist violence and brawls between BM supporters and their targets. One of the most notorious BM members at the time was Kent organiser Nicky Crane, the literal poster boy for fascist skinheads after his snarling face had been used for a compilation album called Strength through Oi!. Crane repeatedly led gangs on racist rampages through London, including a 200 strong mob who attacked Brick Lane in 1979, and would go on to act as head of security for the band Skrewdriver. Unknown to McLaughlin, one of his main lieutenants, Ray Hill who was organiser for the Midlands was secretly working to destroy the group. Hill had been a follower of Jordan in the 60s and helped organise the Leicester branch when the BM was first set up, before emigrating to South Africa in 1970. He returned in 1981 having had a change of heart, and began leaking information to the antifascist newspaper Searchlight. Hill orchestrated a major split in the BM in 1983, causing McLaughlin to spend a large sum on legal fees and the group folded soon after.

After McLaughlin’s disbanding of the BM, many members refused to accept the loss of the group and continued using the name, reforming under the leadership od Stephen Frost from Yorkshire. The new BM also formed another adjacent group called the British National Socialist Movement (BNSM) which acted as an underground wing. BNSM members forged links with loyalist paramilitaries and some joined English units of the UDA. BNSM members went on to become a core part of Combat 18 during the 1990’s, a group that committed hundreds of violent assaults on political opponents and ethnic minorities during that decade. The BM has proven surprisingly resilient and still maintains a presence in the British far-right today, with a couple of hundred members estimated to be in the ranks.

After his disbanding of the BM, McLaughlin ran an army surplus store in Chester for many years. His autobiography recalls fondly a trip to Dachau where he convinces himself it couldn’t have been a death camp, and a pilgrimage to the Hitler’s Eagles Nest home in Bavaria. Homages are paid to international comrades such as David Duke and Ernst Zundel. By the 2000’s McLaughlin had become a prolific author using the name Michael Walsh and wrote a number of books including such titles as Heroes of the Reich, The Martyrdom of William Joyce and The Holy Book of Adolf Hitler. Many of the books were published by Historical Review Press run by Anthony Hancock. Hancock was a National Front and League of Saint George member who published widely for various far-right groups including Combat 18, NF and BNP. The HRP published a range of Holocaust denial literature including the influential Did Six Million Really Die?, worked with David Irving and had extensive connections to Germany where he distributed large volumes of revisionist material. McLaughlin also contributed to Final Conflict, the magazine of the International Third Position as part of their Black Books series. He developed strong connections to CEDADE, a Spanish fascist party and now lives in Spain where he writes and contributes to media to this day.

References:

Duddy, Gerard (2006) Paddy Roe McLaughlin – Donegal and the SCW, Inish Times November 1 2006

Goodrich-Clark, Nicholas (2003) Black Sun – Aryan Cults, Esoteric Nazism and the Politics of Identity New York: New York University Press

Hill, Ray (1988) The Other face of Terror – Inside Europe’s Neo-Nazi Network London: Grafton Books

Macklin, Graham (2020) Failed Führers London: Routledge

McLaughlin Walsh, Michael (2017) The Rise of the Sunwheel Lulu Press