Andrew Brons

Andrew Henry William Brons (born 3 June 1947) is a British politician and former MEP.

Brons began his political career in 1964 when, aged seventeen, he joined the National Socialist Movement (NSM), a Neo-Nazi organisation founded on Adolf Hitler's birthday by Colin Jordan.

In 1965, Brons joined John Bean's British National Party (not the same as the current incarnation), which later merged with the League of Empire Loyalists to form the National Front (NF) in 1967.

He studied politics at the University of York, and graduated in 1970.

After graduation, Brons started working as a lecturer at Harrogate College in 1970, and worked there until 2005; lecturing in A-Level law and government, and politics.

He has two daughters.

Brons was voted onto the National Front's national directorate in 1974, and "as the NF's education officer, he hosted seminars on racial nationalism and tried to give its racism a more "scientific" basis."

Brons contested Harrogate for the National Front in both February and October 1974 general elections, polling 1,186 votes (2.3%) in February and 1,030 (2.3%) in October.

When Labour's Roy Jenkins resigned his parliamentary seat on appointment as European Commission President in early 1977, Brons contested the Birmingham Stechford by-election for the National Front.

He polled 2,955 votes (8.2%), forcing the Liberal candidate into fourth place.

Following the poor showing by the National Front at the 1979 general election, and John Tyndall's subsequent departure, Brons became Chairman of the NF in 1980 and in doing so broke with his former mentor.

Brons, though, led the NF in name only.

Initially Martin Webster, National Activities Organiser, exerted the most influence, before the Political Soldier wing of the party became more important.

Brons tended to support the Flag Group although he lost influence to Ian Anderson and faded from his leading position.

Nevertheless, Brons had links to the Political Soldier wing and is credited with having introduced the concept of distributism into the party, which formed a central part of the new ideology of the NF.

Brons co-edited the NF journal New Nation, with Richard Verrall, the author of a work of holocaust denial, Did Six Million Really Die?

He was the chairman of the National Front in the early 1980s.

In 1980, Searchlight published two letters Brons had written in 1965 to Françoise Dior, Jordan's wife, in which he mentioned meeting an NSM member who "mentioned such activities as bombing synagogues", stating in response to this that: "On this subject I have a dual view, in that I realise that he is well intentioned, I feel that our public image may suffer considerable damage as a result of these activities. I am however open to correction on this point."

The second letter requested materials such as a swastika, a copy of the Horst-Wessel-Lied, and posters and stickers in furtherance of Brons' goal of forming a local NSM group.

On at least two occasions in the early-1980s, Brons' far-right activities caused difficulties for his employer: on 24 June 1981, more than 500 student and Anti-Nazi League campaigners marched through Harrogate, taking over the college building where Brons was teaching; six protesters were arrested.

In February 1982, more than 300 protesters clashed with 100 National Front supporters outside Brons' classroom in central Harrogate, and in the process two students were stabbed and six people arrested.

Brons edited the National Front's 1983 general election manifesto, which "called for a global apartheid to prevent the 'extinction' of whites everywhere."

The manifesto declared that "The National Front rejects the whole concept of multiracialism. We recognise inherent racial differences in Man. The races of Man are profoundly unequal in their characteristics, potential and abilities."

In October 1983, Brons called upon the principal of Harrogate College as a character witness, when Brons was convicted by magistrates of using insulting words and behaviour likely to cause a breach of the peace and fined £50.

Brons had been leading a group leafleting in Leeds city centre.

A shop assistant reported that the group had been shouting "National Front" and making clenched fist salutes, while an unnamed policeman is supposed to have heard "white power" and "death to Jews".

When a police officer of Malaysian origin asked the group to disperse, the policeman said that Brons replied: "I am aware of my legal rights. Inferior beings like you probably do not appreciate the principle of free speech," - an allegation which Brons has always denied.

His appeal to Leeds Crown Court was unsuccessful.

Although Brons continued as a leading member and even wrote a number of articles for the Political Soldier-supporting Nationalism Today, he was generally opposed to the positions of the 'official' National Front and resigned from the chairmanship in November 1984.

He left the 'official' party altogether in 1986 but, unlike Webster who had been expelled in 1984, Brons became involved with the Flag Group, an NF Fronde.

It was Brons who, in 1987, approached Tyndall with a view to an electoral alliance between the Flag Group and the modern British National Party but the proposed deal fell through and was repudiated by Martin Wingfield in The Flag newspaper.

Long active in far-right politics in Britain, he was elected as a Member of the European Parliament (MEP) for Yorkshire and the Humber for the fascist British National Party (BNP) at the 2009 European Parliament election and held the seat until May 2014.

Questioned in 2009 about his membership of the National Socialist Movement, Brons said, "People do silly things when they are seventeen. Peter Mandelson was once a member of the Young Communist League but we don't continue to call him a Communist."

Brons was forced to return to the issue in March 2011 when – on the BBC's Daily Politics programme – Dominic Carman, the Liberal Democrat candidate for the 2011 Barnsley Central by-election, called Brons, in his absence, a "Nazi and an admirer of Adolf Hitler".

In response Brons released a statement on his website, stating:

He resigned the BNP whip in October 2012 and became patron of the far-right British Democratic Party.

He did not seek re-election in 2014.

Brons, who has English and German ancestry, was born in Hackney, East London, two years after the end of the Second World War.

He spent most of his childhood in Sidcup, on the outskirts of London, before his family moved to Harrogate when he was eleven years old.

He attended Harrogate Grammar School until the age of sixteen, when he left to join the civil service, where he remained for 16 months before sitting part-time A-Levels in law and economics at Harrogate College.