Creating a Female Space Within Neo‐Nazi Movements: The British Movement's Women's Section in Flintshire

In September 1976, British Tidings, a publication of the Neo‐Nazi political organisation, BM, announced they were to begin a women's division. Their Headquarter was based in Queensferry, Flintshire, North Wales; on the cusp of the English border. The British Movement (BM), who had disseminated literature thick with racially targeted rhetoric, had decided a women's division was the natural progression for the movement. The announcement stated that this division would be instrumental in attracting ‘countless thousands of nationalist like‐minded women in Britain to work in an organised way for our Country's future’. Mary Calland, wife to local leader, Arthur Calland, was to head up the BM Women's Division (BMWD) Calland emphasised that mobilising would be an opportunity for ‘wives, girlfriends, sisters and mothers’ alike (British Tidings [Queensferry], September 1976). This paper will examine the rhetoric and position of the women's division of the BM in Flintshire, during the late 20th century. This research sheds light on the gender dynamics within Neo‐Nazi political groups, exploring the motivations and the reception of female participation. Using British Tidings, this article argues that the BMWD functioned less as an autonomous political body and more as a gendered support structure; attempting to legitimise the movement through domesticity and racialised moral panic within a borderland Welsh context.