Eddy Morrison 1949-2020

Posted by admin978 on June 12, 2020 · Leave a Comment

H&D greatly regret to announce the death of Eddy Morrison: proud Yorkshireman, veteran national socialist and a contributor to our magazine for many years. Eddy died on Wednesday following a fall at his home, a month before his 71st birthday which would have been 16th July.
A reprint of Eddy’s 2003 autobiography Memoirs of a Street Soldier was being launched to coincide with his birthday, but very sadly it now coincides with his death.
Educated at Leeds Grammar School, Eddy Morrison had to leave school at 15 to earn a wage and support his family after his father was crippled in an industrial accident. Following teenage service with the RAF, he became an active racial nationalist in 1967 with the newly formed National Front, attending the NF’s first annual meeting at Conway Hall, Westminster in October that year. Though he had a great deal in common ideologically with the NF’s future leader John Tyndall, Eddy had been too young to be involved in the national socialist schisms of the early ’60s, so he was able to join the NF as an 18-year-old without any factional baggage.
NWN: In 1968 he succeeded Phil Stone as the NF’s Leeds branch organiser. Though he was to be a member – and indeed founder! – of numerous different parties and movements, Eddy’s ideology was to remain consistent for more than half a century. As he put it, he regarded national socialism and White racial nationalism as interchangeable terms.

In fact though he would often joke about the myriad organisations he had joined or founded, this is very much a reflection of our movement’s history. Unlike some other leading movement personalities such as Nick Griffin, Eddy did not blow with the prevailing wind, changing his ideological colours to suit personal advancement. Eddy remained Eddy.
In 1972 Eddy organised the Leeds branch of Colin Jordan’s British Movement, breaking away at the end of 1973 with a small group who formed the National Democratic Freedom Movement. Essentially Yorkshire-based, the NDFM quickly attracted a reputation for highly effective street activity. At a time when political violence was commonplace throughout the White world – often with the far left gaining the upper hand – Eddy’s street soldiers made much of West Yorkshire a “red-free zone”.
During 1975 the NDFM expanded, as Eddy recruited other national socialists from outside Yorkshire to expand the movement into a new British National Party. Though he was also to become a prominent organiser in John Tyndall’s BNP a few years later, this 1970s version was a completely different party.
During this period John Tyndall was engaged in a struggle for control of the NF, for a time losing the leadership to a Strasserite/populist faction led by former Conservative activist John Kingsley Read, so Eddy’s BNP attracted support from numerous national socialists who had quit the NF during this period.
The Morrison BNP continued and built on the NDFM’s fearsome reputation for taking control of the streets. It also became part of a growing national socialist network in Europe. German attorney Manfred Roeder was guest speaker at the BNP’s annual congress.

Once John Tyndall and Martin Webster had re-established control of the NF, it wasn’t long before Eddy Morrison and his BNP were invited to merge into the Front, and Eddy became the NF’s Yorkshire regional organiser. This period coincided with the international phenomenon of ‘punk rock’, in which Eddy had taken an early interest, attending early punk gigs including memorable appearances by the Sex Pistols in Manchester and Leeds.
He was quick to see the potential of this angry movement of working class rebellion (though of course it shocked more ‘respectable’ nationalists). As Eddy later wrote:
We either had to condemn Punk or use it. I chose the latter option and started a spoof fanzine called Punk Front which featured a NF logo with a safety pin in it. To my great surprise, Punk Front was a huge success and soon, especially in Leeds, NF members and supporters were going to the biggest Punk club around — the infamous F Club. I started to regularly go to the club and NF Punks were recruiting other punks. In a few months, the NF was the dominant political force on the big punk scene in Leeds. Music papers such as Sounds and the New Musical Express were taking an interest in us. Gary Bushell was sent up to look into the phenomenon. We had pro-NF letters published in many music papers and other punks started bringing out pro-NF fanzines. We even started two bands — the Ventz and the Dentists. Both these bands were to feature later on in the start of ‘Rock Against Communism.’

Eddy Morrison with Simon Sheppard at one of the latter’s many court appearances

Eddy Morrison could justifiably claim to have been the founder of the White racial nationalist music scene, which was later to expand under the late Ian Stuart into Blood & Honour.
Around the time of Eddy’s 30th birthday in 1979, British nationalism had one of its watershed moments when the National Front began to fall apart following disappointing election results. A large part of the last forty years of Eddy Morrison’s life was to involve his attempts to navigate treacherous political waters and maintain uncompromising national socialism in the UK.
This included years of activism in the BNP and later NF, punctuated by attempts to form breakaway movements such as the National Action Party, White Nationalist Party and British People’s Party. At other times Eddy attempted to build cross-factional alliances, and at one stage was a leading figure in the Spearhead Support Group, formed to build support for John Tyndall in his quest to recapture the BNP from Nick Griffin.
In these many activities Eddy could count on a loyal cadre of supporters, notably his Bradford-based comrade Kev Watmough – and it’s fair to say that Eddy was shocked to have outlived numerous fellow streetfighters such as Dave Brown and Chris ‘Weasel’ Ledger.

Eddy Morrison (far right!) at an H&D event in Blackburn, Lancashire: also in this photo (blue shirt, centre left) is his late comrade Dave Brown.

Latterly Eddy published the online magazine White Voice, as well as contributing to H&D – both as author, reviewer and quizmaster at social events! It is impossible in one brief online article to encompass the life of this uncompromising national socialist warrior, and for obvious reasons we have avoided speaking about Eddy’s family, of whom he was so proud and who will miss him greatly.
Needless to say, the next edition of H&D will contain a full obituary of our friend and comrade Eddy Morrison.
Cattle die, and kinsmen die. And so one dies oneself. One thing I know that never dies: The fame of a dead man’s deeds
14/88 Eddy!

(above and below) Eddy Morrison with H&D editor Mark Cotterill and fellow nationalists at a Remembrance Day ceremony in Darwen, Lancashire, 2006

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NWN : We are very sorry and sad to hear this news about Eddy. Having known him since 1976 in the nationalist scene.