Blood & Honour

Blood & Honour is a neo-Nazi music promotion network founded in 1987 and composed of white power skinheads and other white nationalists. The group organises white power concerts by Rock Against Communism (RAC) bands and distributes a magazine of the same name. There are official divisions in several different countries around the world. It is listed as a hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center.

Ian Stuart Donaldson, singer of the band Skrewdriver, was the founder and one of the prominent leaders until his death in 1993. Blood & Honour took its name from the motto of the Hitler Youth, Blut und Ehre. Sometimes the code 28 stands for Blood & Honour, derived from the second and eighth letters of the Latin alphabet, B and H. Blood & Honour has an armed wing called Combat 18 (C18), which has carried out racist attacks, acts of vandalism and terrorism.

The roots of Blood and Honour go back to 1977 in the United Kingdom, when the white nationalist National Front (NF) founded a music-based movement, Rock Against Communism (RAC), in response to the Anti-Nazi League's Rock Against Racism campaign. By 1980, a new version of the formerly non-racist punk rock band Skrewdriver — by then a white power skinhead band — relaunched the RAC movement.

With the aid of the NF, the White Noise Club (WNC) organized concerts under the RAC name, and the RAC movement grew throughout 1983 and 1984. Despite the absence of formal advertising, concert attendance averaged about 600 people. Bands that performed at the concerts included Skrewdriver, Brutal Attack, No Remorse, The Ovaltinees, Peter & The Wolves and Skullhead. In 1984, white power skinheads from Britain and Europe attended several outdoor RAC festivals organized by the WNC and the NF. The WNC gained garnered an even larger audience with the release of Skrewdriver's album Hail The New Dawn by the German label Rock-O-Rama Records.

In 1986, the NF split into two different factions, which effectively severed the link between the WNC and Rock-O-Rama. Around the same time, it was discovered that the WNC had been defrauding bands and concert-goers. Several bands left the WNC, including Skrewdriver, No Remorse, Sudden Impact and Brutal Attack. This situation convinced Ian Stuart Donaldson of Skrewdriver to break away and organize concerts for the NF. Donaldson created the new independent organisation Blood and Honour, and by June 1987, with the help of other white power bands, Blood and Honour was officially launched, along with a magazine of the same name. A concert was held in Morden, Surrey to commemorate this launch on September 5, with Skrewdriver, Brutal Attack, Sudden Impact and No Remorse playing in front of a crowd of 500, including French, Italian and German supporters.

By the end of 1988, Blood & Honour magazine was a quarterly magazine that had grown from eight to 16 pages in the space of only a few issues. The magazine included features such as concert reports, band interviews, readers' letters, RAC record charts and a column called "White Whispers". A mail-order service called Skrewdriver Services soon formed within its pages, selling items such as: white power albums, flags, Loyalist tapes, T-shirts and Swastika pendants. The back page of Blood & Honour Issue Number 13 advertised a Skrewdriver concert in London on September 12, 1992. Posters and fliers were posted around the country, advertising the concert and listing a redirection point as Waterloo Rail Station. This led newspapers to publish articles about Blood & Honour, and one radio station aired an interview with Ian Stuart, which concluded with the interviewer wishing him well. Over 2000 people from all over Europe were expected to attend the concert.

The night before the concert, Stuart was attacked in a Burton pub. The next, day police closed down Waterloo Station and the tube station, preventing many people from reaching the redirection point. Hundreds more Blood and Honour supporters who had journeyed from abroad were turned back at ports in Folkestone and Dover. These few were outnumbered, and clashed with anti-Nazi protesters. Missiles such as bricks and champagne bottles taken from bins outside of South Bank restaurants were used to attack the Blood and Honour supporters. Battles ensued for about two hours, and the concert proceeded in the function hall of the Yorkshire Grey pub in Eltham, Kent. The media termed the event the "Battle of Waterloo," and it made international news in newspapers and on television.

In 1992, the newly formed Blood and Honour Midlands Division was in charge of organising the annual White Xmas concert. On December 19, over 400 supporters gathered at a working men's club in Mansfield to watch No Remorse, Razors Edge and Skrewdriver perform. In 1993, Blood and Honour East Midlands Division planned to stage an outdoor festival on July 31. Donaldson was arrested and served with an injunction order not to perform at the concert. The venue was blockaded by the police, who seized amplifiers and confiscated sound equipment.

Later that year, the Blood and Honour East Midlands Division organised a concert for September 25, and plans were made for Skrewdriver to play at the largest white nationalist music festival ever in Europe. Three nights before the concert, Donaldson and a few friends were travelling in a car that spun out of control into a ditch. Some of the passengers endured minor wounds, one was killed instantly, and Donaldson was pronounced dead on September 24, 1993. The following day, 100 Skrewdriver supporters travelled to the Blood & Honour social in the Midlands, unaware of the deaths. Each year, on or near the anniversary of the Ian Stuart's death, a large memorial concert is held. In 2008, a concert in Redhill, Somerset attracted widespread BBC, radio and newspaper coverage.

reference wikipedia