Historical Dictionary of Terrorism Third Edition

NATIONAL FRONT • 467to seek social progress or redress of social wrongs. Unlike later terroristgroups that disavowed being terrorists but instead claimed tobe “freedom-fighters” and the like, the Narodnaya Volya franklyavowed they were “terrorists.”From 1878 to 1881 this group assassinated the governor-general ofSt. Petersburg and also the head of the internal security branch of theTsarist secret police. The group actually made eight assassination attemptsagainst Tsar Alexander II before finally succeeding in a ninthattempt on 13 March 1881. During the period 1879–1883, most of the70 or so core members of the group were arrested and the principalleaders hanged in public. On 1 March 1887, seven remaining membersof the group plotted to assassinate Tsar Alexander III but werecaught and tried. Five of them were hanged on 5 May 1887, includingAleksandr Ulyanov, the older brother of Vladimir I. Lenin. This lastepisode ended the group, although later groups assumed its name.NATIONAL FRONT. This is the name of at least two political parties,one in Great Britain and another in France.1. British National Front: A political party of British Fascistsfounded in 1967 with the aims of stopping nonwhite immigration toBritain, opposing leftists and Jews, and seeking to create a racialist andcorporatist state in Britain through a combination of political violenceand electoral competition. From 1972 to 1977 the following of the NationalFront expanded greatly due to a backlash among Britons againsta heightened increase in black Caribbean, East Indian, and Africanimmigration from former colonial possessions. In the 1974 generalelection, the Front averaged 3.1 percent of the vote and by 1977 gained5 percent of the votes in Greater London’s local council elections.The Front achieved its mobilization of racist votes partly throughits strategy of holding marches through predominantly nonwhite urbandistricts. Youths from skinhead gangs would use these occasionsto bait nonwhites and commit acts of vandalism. These marches alsoattracted radical leftist counterdemonstrators. Racial riots often brokeout as well as clashes between the rightists and leftists.While the National Front became the largest and most successfulof Britain’s Fascist groups, personal rivalries and disagreements overthe group’s fundamental strategy rendered it largely ineffective andpushed it into decline. In 1979, National Front leader Martin Webster(1943– ) was convicted of inciting interracial conflict and hate