The Rise and Fall of the English Defence League: Self-Governance, Marginal Members and the Far Right
| Author | John Meadowcroft,Elizabeth A Morrow |
| Date | 01 August 2019 |
| DOI | 10.1177/0032321718777907 |
| Published date | 01 August 2019 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
777907PCX0010.1177/0032321718777907Political StudiesMorrow and Meadowcroft
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Political Studies
2019, Vol. 67(3) 539 –556
The Rise and Fall of the
© The Author(s) 2018
English Defence League:
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Self-Governance, Marginal
https://doi.org/10.1177/0032321718777907
DOI: 10.1177/0032321718777907
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Members and the Far Right
Elizabeth A Morrow and
John Meadowcroft
Abstract
What determines the success or failure of far-right organisations? This article uses new qualitative
data to explain the sudden rise and subsequent decline of the English Defence League, an anti-
Islamic, street protest organisation established in the UK in 2009. We explain the rise and
fall of the English Defence League through the lens of the theory of collective action to show
that the English Defence League initially motivated activism by supplying selective incentives
that were enhanced by the participation of others. The pursuit of ‘participatory crowding’ led
to indiscriminate recruitment into the organisation that enabled numbers to expand into the
thousands, but ultimately caused the English Defence League’s downfall because it resulted in
the presence of large numbers of ‘marginal members’ with low levels of commitment whose
subsequent exit was decisively destructive. Self-governance mechanisms to ensure greater loyalty
from members could have prevented the English Defence League’s decline but would also have
limited its initial success.
Keywords
far right, activism, Islamophobia, participatory crowding, extremism
Accepted: 27 April 2018
What determines the success or failure of far-right organisations? This article uses new
data to explain the sudden rise and subsequent decline of the English Defence League
(EDL), an anti-Islamic, street protest organisation established in the UK in 2009. In con-
trast with other European countries, the UK far right has predominately been a fringe
phenomenon, attracting relatively few voters and activists. In the 1970s, the National
Front did mobilise significant numbers of supporters and achieved limited local electoral
King’s College London, UK
Corresponding author:
John Meadowcroft, King’s College London, Strand, London WC2R 2LS, UK.
Email: john.meadowcroft@kcl.ac.uk
540
Political Studies 67(3)
success (Fielding, 1981; Walker, 1977), and in the 2000s, the British National Party
(BNP) won a number of local authority seats and close to a million votes and two Members
of the European Parliament (MEPs) at the 2009 European Parliament elections (Goodwin,
2010, 2011), but both of these successes proved short-lived – each organisation was effec-
tively moribund a decade after the peak of its success. In 2010 and 2011, the EDL attracted
thousands of participants to its public demonstrations, but it then also experienced a steep
decline which saw numbers dwindle to a few hundred participants and the end of its
capacity for mass mobilisation. This article uses qualitative research evidence to explain
the trajectory of the EDL and thereby meets Goodwin’s (2011: 50) challenge of getting
inside ‘the black box of right-wing extremist organisations’ to understand how activists
are recruited and commitment is sustained (or not).
We explain the rise and fall of the EDL through the lens of the theory of collective
action (Olson, 1965; Ostrom, 1998; Tullock, 1971) to show that the EDL initially moti-
vated activism by supplying selective incentives that were enhanced by the participation
of others – what Iannaccone (1992) termed ‘participatory crowding’. The pursuit of par-
ticipatory crowding led to indiscriminate recruitment into the organisation that enabled
numbers to expand into the thousands, but ultimately caused the EDL’s downfall because
it resulted in the presence of large numbers of ‘marginal members’ with low levels of
commitment whose subsequent exit was decisively destructive. Self-governance mecha-
nisms to ensure greater loyalty from members could have prevented this decline but
would also have limited the group’s initial success.
Most studies of right-wing extremism utilise either demand-side or supply-side expla-
nations. Demand-side explanations suggest far-right groups will appeal to individuals
with low socioeconomic status in times of social and economic uncertainty (Betz, 1998;
Falter and Schumann, 1988), or show that far-right activism may satisfy participant
demands for dignity and fraternity (Ezekiel, 1995; Fryer and Levitt, 2012). In the context
of the EDL, scholars have identified the salience of the group’s Islamophobic rhetoric to
young, White, working-class men lacking educational or employment opportunities
(Goodwin et al., 2016; Kassimeris and Jackson, 2015; Winlow et al., 2017), and the emo-
tional appeal of EDL activism to these individuals (Busher, 2016; Pilkington, 2016).
Supply-side approaches emphasise the role of political organisations in providing
opportunities for political participation and suggest that the organisation of parties and
groups will be a key determinant of their success or failure (Dinas et al., 2016; Kitschelt,
1995; Mudde, 2007). In respect of the EDL, scholars have identified organisational inept-
itude and internal conflict over the ends of the group and the means to achieve them
(Busher, 2016), and the resignation of its founder Tommy Robinson (Goodwin et al.,
2016: 5; Pilkington, 2016: 40–41) as important determinants of the group’s fortunes.
However, demand-side explanations may struggle to explain why some people with
particular socioeconomic characteristics become involved in far-right activism while oth-
ers do not. Demand-side approaches may therefore treat extreme right success as ‘a pas-
sive consequence of macro-level socioeconomic developments’ with little regard to the
agency of leaders or members (Mudde, 2007: 4). In addition, in analysing supply-side
factors, it is important to identify the relevant institutional factors, not their consequences.
Hence, we believe that previous explanations of the EDL’s failure have wrongly attrib-
uted causal weight to symptoms of the group’s decline, whereas the real explanation con-
cerns the failure of the group to put in place appropriate self-governance mechanisms.
We concur with Norris (2005) that a satisfactory explanation of far-right electoral sup-
port or, in our case, activism must understand the interaction of supply and demand. A
Morrow and Meadowcroft
541
recent study of the initial success and subsequent failure of the Ku Klux Klan in the 1920s
shows how supply and demand interactions may determine the fortunes of a far-right
organisation. Fryer and Levitt (2012) identify the tremendous demand for hatred, reli-
gious intolerance and, also, fraternal membership in the US at this time. Klan member-
ship peaked at around four million people in 1924, but following the conviction of a
high-profile Klan member for rape and murder, membership declined to approximately
1% of its peak by 1930. The authors argue that this volatility can be explained by the
readiness of the Klan to supply membership to any supporter who demanded it: many
Klan members were recruited in the years immediately prior to the conviction by sales
agents who received financial rewards for recruiting new members, regardless of their
loyalty to the group. Many of these recruits also belonged to other fraternal organisations
that offered an alternative source of many of the benefits of Klan membership. The Klan’s
failure to put in place mechanisms to ensure the loyalty of its recruits resulted in a mem-
bership base with low levels of attachment who exited the Klan following the high-profile
conviction. Fryer and Levitt use the term ‘marginal members’ to identity members with
low levels of attachment who will exit a group when the utility associated with their
membership is reduced. Our study of the EDL’s rise and decline similarly identified mar-
ginal members as an important factor in the organisation’s collapse.
This article explains the rise and fall of the EDL by uniting supply and demand factors
– we identify the supply-side factors that meant the EDL was initially able, but then
became unable, to meet the demands of its members. This explanation is grounded in the
theory of collective action set out by Olson (1965), Tullock (1971) and Ostrom (1998),
that identifies a fundamental problem of politics that the benefits of political action accrue
to both participants and non-participants, whereas the costs are borne by participants
alone, so it is in each individual’s self-interest to freeride on the activism of others. It is
generally understood that successful groups solve this collective action problem by pro-
viding benefits exclusively to participants that act as selective incentives to motivate
participation. These benefits are supplied as club goods – goods that are neither purely
public nor private but can be supplied exclusively to many people – and may include
welfare, entertainment, friendship networks and access to public office (Buchanan, 1965;
Olson, 1965).
We seek to explain far-right activism using the theory of collective action and use the
case of far-right activism to test the theory of collective action. Specifically, we test the
hypothesis that far-right activism faces an inherent collective action problem and that
significant features of the organisation, operation and fortunes of far-right groups...
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