Exporting fascism across the Commonwealth: The case of the National Front of Australia

In the late 1970s and early 1980s, the British far-right organisation, the National Front (NF), sought to expand their influence across the Anglophone world, and established the Commonwealth National Front (CNF). Leader of the British NF, John Tyndall, envisioned the erection of local NFs in all of the white former settler colonies – Australia, Canada, New Zealand, South Africa and Rhodesia. The object of the CNF was to establish solidarity between white supremacist organisations worldwide and foster a transnational fascist movement to ‘protect’ white ‘civilisation’. The National Front of Australia (NFA) was one of the few local NFs that was actually formed, although its membership remained small and geographically compact. Despite ambitions to replicate the populism of the British NF, the NFA was hindered by the notoriety of its sister organisation, with a hostile media and dedicated anti-fascist movement mobilised quickly after the NFA’s formation in June 1978. With the NFA seemingly defunct by the early 1980s (and similar NFs in South Africa and New Zealand also collapsing), the attempt to build the CNF can be viewed as part of a wider history of failed venture to export British-styled fascism across the white Dominions of the British Empire/Commonwealth.