THE National Front has started a recruitment campaign for young members outside schools in Scotland – but admitted to “disappointing” feedback.

The neo-nazi organisation targeted pupils in Aberdeen earlier this month, by trying to hand out copies of its youth magazine, Bulldog.

The National Front (NF) says it has asked members to carry out a similar exercise at unspecified schools in Dundee and Glasgow.

Dundee City Council said it has alerted all head teachers of secondary schools in the area and is monitoring the situation.

According to an NF Facebook posting, three of its Scottish members – two males and one female – went to the streets near Aberdeen Grammar in January and spoke to youngsters who had just left school after sitting exams.

It said the party chairman had decided pupils older than 16-years-old, rather than 14-year-olds, should be targeted after “telephone calls from concerned parents”.

The posting added: “We must admit that some of the feedback was disappointing but it was a worthwhile exercise.

“The majority of the youngsters said they had no interest at all in politics but would listen to what was said.

“On a positive note one lad said he would take copies for his friends and he would let us know what they thought about Bulldog.”

The Sunday Herald attempted to contact the National Front (NF) by phone and email, but did not receive a response.

The UK leader of the NF is Dave MacDonald, from Aberdeen, who quit the BNP as he did not think it was right-wing enough. Last year he won a seat on Garthdee community council after securing just 18 votes.

A spokesman for Aberdeen Anti-Fascist Alliance, said it was a multi-cultural city due to the influences such as the international oil industry, with children from all over the world attending its schools.

He said: “The National Front’s knuckle-dragging racist bile is going to get them absolutely nowhere.

“The NF is the last bastion of unashamed 1970s style racism. They are an embarrassment and they are such a tiny minority.

“The schoolkids should not have to put up with that walking to school, parents should be able to let their kids walk to school without having to face that and the staff shouldn’t have to walk past that.”

He added: "It is important people don't get the idea that Aberdeen is some sort of hotbed of racism, because it is not.

"Some people might argue that these people should just be ignored, but they need to be countered now before it gets any further.

"Aberdeen has a proud history of opposing fascism, racism and discrimination and these people have no place in 21st Century Scotland."

An image of the front page of Bulldog magazine, which was relaunched last year and is described as the official magazine for the Young National Front, bears the headline “White Youth Unite” and states it is campaigning against “our once Great Britain becoming a Muslim nation” and the “European Union Super-State”.

Other postings on the Facebook site include a link to a story of survival from Auschwitz concentration camp with the comment “Fairytale time again!”.

Dr Paul Jackson, a senior lecturer in modern history at Northampton University, who specialises in research into the post-war far right in Britain, said it appeared the NF was returning to tactics of the 1970s and 1980s in trying to attract “disaffected” youth as members.

He said it was quite a significant move, which should be considered in light of recent debates around radicalisation of young people by Islamic State (IS).

“This sort of stuff is seen as very small-scale and a nuisance, but if this were Muslims trying to target other Muslims with some IS related material then it would be a much, much bigger issue," he said.

“I think it is quite serious - even though they are rather amateurish in many ways, the National Front is trying to draw people in and target schools in particular.”

Jackson said the NF was one of many small groups on the extreme-far right in Britain, but also had a very strong neo-Nazi agenda.

But he added: “Broadly speaking it is one of the more extreme ones as it has that neo-Nazi identification quite openly within it.

“If the BNP and the National Front were competing against each other in an election, the National Front candidate would probably make play out of being the more hardline and more extreme than the ‘softer’ BNP figure.”

Both Aberdeen and Glasgow City Council declined to make any comment.

A spokesman for Dundee City Council said: “We have briefed the head teachers of all nine secondary schools in the city to make them aware of this information and have been working closely with our colleagues in Police Scotland.

“We have received no reports of any incidents of this type in Dundee, but we are monitoring the situation closely.”