I CARE - - UK: Far-right Combat 18 'trying to recruit Birmingham teachers'

5.7.16

I CARE - - News - Internet Centre Anti Racism Europe



Ex-member Nigel Bromage claims feared group targeting 'people with influence' after Brexit

-- 2/7/2016- A former leading light in the violent world of neo-Nazism has revealed a plot to recruit Birmingham and West Midlands teachers to the far-right. Nigel Bromage has documents from ultra-right wing group Combat 18 – extremists committed to a thuggish White Revolution – outlining the drive to take the fight to classrooms. The 51-year-old, from Stechford, believes fascism prevents a greater threat than ever before because Brexit has provided disillusioned and dangerous individuals with the catalyst they crave. And it is feared their growing influence may lead to a sharp spike in hate crime. “The far right is more dangerous because it is splintered into 30 groups,” Bromage said. “In the West Midlands, Combat 18 and the Ku Klux Klan present the greatest threat. “Combat 18, in particular, is actively looking to recruit teachers. They want people with influence.”

Documents we have received, siphoned from a Combat 18 forum, clearly outlines the outfit’s ambition to spread its mantra of hate in schools. “Teachers are angry,” said Bromage, “they are demoralised by cutbacks. The message to them is ‘We believe in education, we want more history taught in schools. We know how important your jobs are, we need teachers’.” Those who fall under the spell of the far right are given a simple guide to winning over pupils in their care. They are trained to ask nationalistic questions in classrooms, then feign ignorance about the answers. Those answers are provided in pamphlets handed by foot soldiers outside the school gates Bromage claims. It is a ploy he knows only too well. He was lured into extreme politics by a leaflet presented to the teenager outside Colmers Farm School, Rubery.

The father-of-two speaks from experience. After 20 years in the upper echelons of such organisations as the National Front, British Movement and Combat 18 himself, he broke free, sickened by the violence, and scared by the threats. The community worker now fronts Small Steps Consultants, an organisation which educates schools, universities and public bodies about the threat posed by neo-Nazis and spells out the cost, in torn lives, of the propaganda of racial division. Bromage knows all about the cost. It cost him his marriage: his wife, who despised the extreme political path her husband marched along with such pride, gave Nigel a “them or me” ultimatum. He chose the far right. But after denouncing the organisations he served, he lost more – he was forced to flee Birmingham and his job.