Gardeners’ World’s Carol Klein has spoken out about the harrowing time she defended herself against a member of the far-right political group, the National Front.
Carol was part of the action group the Women’s Workers League at the time and the group were gathering in a London community hall to plan a protest against a National Front meeting.
The BBC star recounts a National Front leader attacking her, leading her to defend herself with the stool she had been sitting on. She shared this daunting experience in her book Hortobiography.
The 79-year-old gardening expert wrote: “On one occasion, we held a meeting in the community hall on Talbot Road, just down the road from the Mangrove to discuss joint action in demonstrating against a meeting the National Front were about to hold at the old Kensington and Chelsea Town Hall.
“The police were informed that our meeting was due to take place since there was talk of the National Front trying to disrupt the proceedings. Eventually they turned up, shortly after a mob of National Fronters had broken into the meeting and started to attack participants.
“They came in armed with knuckle-dusters and various weapons but got more than they bargained for. There was a fight during which one older bloke, the Colonel, attacked me, and I retaliated by picking up the stool I had been sitting on and hitting him with it.
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“I hate violence and kept reliving this for months afterwards. We threw them out, instead of the police coming to our aid, they allowed the invaders to disperse without taking any names or making any arrests.”
The far-right National Front was established in the 1960s when AK Chesterton, formerly of the British Union of Fascists, defected to the League of Empire Loyalists. He then orchestrated the union of several smaller factions to launch the Front.
A combination of the LEL and the British National Party culminated in the National Front’s first conference in 1967, which was disrupted by anti-fascist demonstrators. The group’s influence waned after the Battle of Lewisham in August 1977, when National Front members organised a march from New Cross to Catford via multicultural Lewisham.
The event faced significant opposition from thousands of counter-protesters. When police endeavoured to disperse the crowd at Clifton Rise, the situation escalated violently, resulting in injuries to 56 officers and 214 arrests.
This decline in support, coupled with a shift to the right by Margaret Thatcher’s Conservatives, contributed to the Front’s diminished standing. Long after these tumultuous events, Carol’s reputation surged as she became a part of Channel 4’s ‘Garden Party’ in 1996, but it wasn’t until 2005 that she joined ‘Gardeners’ World’ on a full-time basis.
Since then, she has become a beloved regular on the hit BBC programme. In addition to Gardeners’ World, she has presented numerous gardening shows, including a series from her Glebe Cottage residence in North Devon.
Gardeners’ World is back on BBC Two at 8pm tonight, with Monty Don offering advice on how to get the best value when purchasing perennials and Rachel de Thame investigating how plants interact with pollinators.
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