National Front

The National Front is depicted as a white racist organization active in Brickhall, where its battles with the Socialist Workers Party form part of the neighborhood’s recurring political violence. The novel gives little information about its membership or formal structure; its significance lies chiefly in the place it occupies in Mishal Sufyan’s account of the Street and in the racial conflict that account records.

Street Politics in Brickhall

From the window of Saladin Chamcha’s attic, Mishal describes Brickhall as a modern mythological battleground, with white racists and black self-defense groups cast as opposing forces. She recalls that the National Front fought the Socialist Workers Party beneath the railway bridge on Sundays, from closing time until opening time. The residents of the Street, she says, were left to clear up the wreckage during the rest of the week. Her account makes political conflict part of the neighborhood’s repeated routine, with local people bearing consequences beyond the hours of the clashes.

From Public Clashes to Scattered Violence

Mishal contrasts those earlier pitched battles with a later pattern of smaller, individualized attacks. She describes groups of white attackers roaming the Street and threatening residents in groups of five or six. The novel presents this change as a shift in the form of racial violence, not as a specific change in the National Front’s tactics: it does not identify the later attackers as members of the organization. The distinction matters because the National Front is named in the account of the earlier confrontations, while the subsequent threats belong to the wider climate Mishal describes.

The Wider Racialized Setting

Other episodes establish the broader pressures surrounding Brickhall’s politics without linking them directly to the National Front. After the Bostan disaster, Saladin is reported as a suspicious person on a beach; a large police search and immigration officers converge on Rosa Diamond’s house, where officials treat his account of his identity with ridicule. Later, Hal Valance dismisses Saladin from The Aliens Show on the grounds that his presence makes the program too explicitly racial. These incidents show racial classification operating through policing, immigration scrutiny, and commercial decisions, but the novel does not present them as National Front actions.

Narrative Significance

Mishal’s account places the National Front within a local history of organized confrontation while also showing how residents experience its aftermath. Her view from the attic window turns the Street into a map of political conflict, but the recurring cleanup and later, less formal attacks resist any sense that violence is confined to a single clash or organization. The National Front thus marks one identifiable force in Brickhall’s racist politics; the novel keeps its role distinct from the wider institutions and acts of racialized hostility around it.