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The implosion of the National Front after it was infiltrated by a former Tory activist working as a Special Branch agent and MI5 has been revealed in newly-unearthed files.

Andy Carmichael was recruited at a garden party held in Cannock to honour Baroness Thatcher in 1991 and asked to help monitor the far-right group in the West Midlands.

Carmichael, who twice stood as a parliamentary candidate for the NF, is named as a “traitor” in the organisation’s internal files, a tranche of which have emerged in an archive held at the University of Warwick’s Modern Records Centre.

The documents show how far-right leaders’ suspicions were confirmed after Carmichael went public about his undercover work in 1997.

(Image: Mike Scott)

And in a further development this week, Carmichael was praised as a “remarkable man” for his work in sabotaging the far-right by a former NF activist who confirmed he had released the documents.

George Ashcroft, who used the first name Wayne at the time, is now an MA student who has renounced racism and made his personal files publicly available.

In one document, John McAuley, the NF’s then chairman, tells members: “The job of Carmichael, if employed by MI5, was to destroy the NF. This I am convinced of.”

McAuley confirms Carmichael was on the NF’s “directorate” and an organiser in the West Midlands. In an attempt to distance the group from the double agent, he describes their former election candidate as a “dodgy car-salesman”.

McAuley writes: “The only NF members to suspect him were in the Dudley, Walsall and Birmingham branches. Their suspicions were proved correct.”

Trying to explain Carmichael’s acceptance in the NF’s ranks, McAuley lauds the former election officer’s record in his error-strewn bulletin, telling supporters: “He was attacked by Red scum at Birmingham Station prior to the NF AGM. So he did go through a lot for the Party!”

Carmichael went public in July 1997, telling the Sunday Times he was fully-salaried for MI5 via a police Special Branch handler in the West Midlands.

The affair became one the most curious stories in the history of the British far-right, and the archive documents suggest his role in the group’s downfall was even greater than first thought.

Embedding himself in the NF’s senior ranks, Carmichael was elected chairman of the West Midlands region and stood for MP in the December, 1994, Dudley West by-election.

(Image: Handout)

But he was later blamed by the group for being instrumental in a divisive name change.

McAuley writes: “I believe Carmichael was a possible Special Branch informer, but an MI5 agent I really don’t know? Whatever he did was for financial gain.”

Already riddled with in-fighting, the NF split over the name change, with Ian Anderson forming the National Democrats as the various factions spluttered to an end over the following years.

McAuley, whose bulletin is strewn with grammatical errors, writes: “Carmichael was the main instigator of the ‘name change split’ Anderson could not have done it without Carmichael’s total support.

“The job of Carmichael, if employed by MI5, was to destroy the NF. This I am convinced of. But it failed, and failed miserably, yet another Government plot to destroy the National Front! It is my belief that he was not the only agent provocateur the others will be exposed by ‘Captain Truth’ in Bulldog. The traitors will be consigned to the political gutter where they belong…”

(Image: Handout)

Ashcroft, who was secretly filmed for a 1997 episode of The Cook Report exposing the NF, alludes to Carmichael’s role in another document entitled “The Final Demise of the NF”.

Ashcroft writes: “It was known in certain quarters that Special Branch were planning, in conjunction with the Right-Wing [sic] of the Tory party to infiltrate, take over and finally destroy certain of the far-right organisations.”

The files also show how far-right leaders’ poisonous and hateful targeting of minority groups ran parallel to their contempt for each other. Letters between Ashcroft, who was expelled from the far-right group after the name change, and then senior BNP figure Nick Griffin disparage and mock associates amid paranoia on all sides about who may have facilitated the double agent’s work.

The bitter split included Griffin writing to Ashcroft describing the National Democrats’ use of an £120,000 inheritance left to the NF as a “whisky fund” and advising him to mail “home truths” to members of the relaunched group.

But despite being courted by Griffin, who was trying to salvage the remains of the NF, a merger with the BNP was ruled out as that link grew too sour.

In 1998 Griffin told a Birmingham NF organiser that the group was a “political corpse”.

Carmichael joined James Goldsmith’s Referendum party in 1996 as he played along with a National Democrats plot to disrupt its election chances, but was expelled after his new political masters found out about his background.

Senior MI5 officers were said to have grown uneasy about playing a role in sabotaging a British election and Carmichael tipped off a local newspaper about his NF links.

The documents show that far from the outward messages of “white unity”, the far-right groups were a mixture of combustible individuals marked by mutual antipathy which was fed by the imposter in their ranks.

Carmichael, now a window salesman in Sutton Coldfield, said this week: “There were a few adrenalin-filled moments but I was just doing what I was being paid to do by MI5. I got debriefed two or three times a year and the main contact was through Special Branch.

“They got me to stay in there until June 1997 when MI5 had established everything they needed to know.

“Two Special Branch and two MI5 met me in Chinatown in Birmingham, paid me my severance cheque and gave me a cuddly toy for my then two-year-old daughter as a way of saying thanks.”

Ashcroft, now an MA student at the University of Wolverhampton, also spoke this week, telling of his repentance and hailing Carmichael’s work in fracturing the far-right.

He said: “I am deeply ashamed of my actions at the time and I have renounced racism and anything of that kind. I would say to anyone not to get involved with groups like these and the longer they are divided the better off society is.

“It might sound ridiculous when you look at The Cook Report and the literature but I didn’t know what I was involved with, I was 19 and I didn’t have a clue.

“The lessons to be learned are ones of education in stopping people falling prey to hateful ideologies.”

Ashcroft, who also became a Tory councillor in Telford, feels he owes a debt of gratitude to Carmichael, who bought him his first pint at the age of 15.

He said: “I admire the work the security services do, they are very good at diverting people from such groups and many people went on to normal lives and families and today are not involved in racism.

“If it had not have been for Andy Carmichael and others like him there are many people who could have gone down a very, very different path.

“In that respect I greatly admire him for putting himself on the line, he is a remarkable man.”