The Extreme Right and its use of the medieval past to inform its profile

This blog follows on from Associate Professor Rachel Moss’ blog on Getting Medieval? The Extreme Right and the Distant Past. During the summer, I have been in the archive, researching, collating and photographing images that relate to the ways in which British extreme right groups use the medieval world from 1962-1982. This was a significant period of change for the movement and by using the lens of medievalism for analysis has proved a fascinating insight into some of their inner workings. There will be more of this when the researched has been properly analysed, but this blog will focus on the methodology and practice of undertaking research of this kind.

This is the second project that I have worked with Rachel on, the first being one that focussed on the far right using medieval chivalric values on Twitter/X. So, this project took us away from the present, into a more familiar territory to me, the recent past and its application. Additionally, I have spent quite a lot of my time in paper archives, so I was happy to return and work through archival items in this way. In a way, as it is a permanent archive, there is time and space to be more selective in which images are captured and filed, as it cannot be lost as web pages get deleted or archived away.

In terms of categories, Rachel gave me a set of parameters broadly attached to the medieval world. With these, I delved into the archival boxes to see where these themes would emerge from the far right and their activities. There were magazines, letters, adverts, poems and pictures which all related to these themes. What is fascinating here, is this is a new and novel way of analysing the far right and its view of the world and the ways in which it uses themes of nostalgia to create something new.

Now that I have a decent amount of time spent in the archive and a meaningful set of archival photos, I have been working with a new photo management system to assist the way in which I store my work. I have been using Tropy, which has meant that I can share the project in real time with Rachel. This is really helpful, as the themes I have attached to each photo (tags in Tropy) can be shared and discussed by all researchers with permission to view the project. I am able to annotate the photos and see with a quick view which theme/tags is proving most popular with the far right. This has given a far more effective, systematic analysis of the archival materials related to the inner workings of the British extreme right, especially the connections around specific groupuscules. The next stage will be for Rachel to review and direct the research onto the next stage, which I am very much looking forward to.

Siobhán Hyland

Dr Siobhán Hyland is an early career researcher and former University of Northampton PhD student. Her work focuses on the history of antifascism, and the prosecution of war crimes.