ABSTRACT
The pre-war rise of Oswald Mosley's British Union of Fascists, with its emphasis on anti-Semitism. Gave way in the 1950s and 1960s to a more diffuse form of race hate about immigrants, from far right parties like the National Front and the British Movement. Their recent legacy can be found in the British National Party. Colonial power from Europe relied on a mixture of military, religious and cultural domination, imposed largely upon the continents of the southern hemisphere. In the case of Costello and his Irish ancestry, this provided him with a sensibility about race and nation and the role of military violence within British colonial conquests. In the late 1970s there was a shared political context connecting Costello and Clapton, which was the emergence of the Anti-Nazi League in response to a resurgence of activity of the far right National Front.
