National Action are a small, violent neo-nazi group who have branches in several states of Australia. National Action opened a bookshop and meeting place in the outer northern Melbourne suburb of Fawkner in January 1997, hoping to exploit the area's high rates of youth unemployment, and to manipulate the widespread feelings of anxiety and uncertainty which years of cutbacks, downsizing and unemployment have created. National Action also have a shop in the working class suburb of Salisbury, South Australia.

National Action say they are 'Australian patriots', that they are only nationalists concerned about issues such as employment and cultural identity. Publicly National Action deny that they are racists and that they are involved in violence. These are dangerous lies, lies which are clear from an examination of the history of this organization.

National Action was formed in 1982 in an attempt to create a fascist organization relevant to Australian conditions. Their leaders aim to build a party of well organized, disciplined street racists. They sell themselves as the group which gets things done while others talk. National Action know that there is very little public support for nazism in Australia and so they deny any link between their ideas and goals and those of Hitler. However, their first chairman, Jim Saleam was photographed by the Age newspaper in nazi uniform and many skinhead members of National Action have pro nazi symbols tattooed on their heads. Two National Action members, Damian Gadsden and Darren Patching, were found guilty of the vicious bashing of a Maori man in Melbourne in September 1996. In court they and their supporters exchanged nazi salutes and shouted "Hail the Aryan Guard".

This violence was not an isolated incident. Jim Saleam was jailed for three and a half years in 1991 after he orchestrated a shotgun attack in 1989 on the Sydney home of Eddie Funde, the African National Congress representative to Australia.

The current chairman of National Action, Michael Brander, was convicted of assaulting an anti racist protester with a flagpole in Melbourne in March 1995 during a National Action demonstration against the Racial Vilification Bill.

As well as violent and cowardly assaults against individuals, National Action are known to have defaced synagogues, attacked the homes and meeting places of anti racist activists, and attempted to create a climate of intimidation and fear through their anti Asian graffiti, stickers and posters.

National Action have a history of brutal internal squabbling. Earlier this year Michael Brander's car was firebombed in Fawkner, in an attack believed to have been carried out by a rival splinter neo-nazi group. The North Melbourne headquarters of this group was ransacked with baseball bats in retaliation.

This feuding has had even more serious consequences. In Sydney in 1991 Perry Whitehouse, a member of National Action, shot dead fellow member Wayne Smith because he suspected him of being an informer. The murder was recorded by bugging equipment planted by ASIO. A similar incident occurred in Perth in 1989, when a member of the break-away group, the Australian Nationalist Movement, murdered another member of this group. The leaders of this Perth based group were jailed for up to 18 years in 1990, after a firebombing campaign directed at Perth's Asian community.

National Action's Fawkner shop is part of Michael Brander's attempt to rebuild his organization, weakened by recent factional infighting. But National Action have not succeeded in consolidating support in Fawkner, or in using their Fawkner shop to grow in size or influence. Opposition from local Fawkner residents and Campaign Against the Nazis has played an important role in frustrating these plans. We need to continue to confront National Action every time they try to organize openly and to challenge them every time they attempt to publicize their racist hatred.

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