also provided by wealthy supporters, some from abroad. Branches were expected to finance their own candidates in election campaigns, raising funds from jumble sales and social events. Membership Numbers The NF faced a high membership turnover. In 1977, Walker described its membership as being "like a bath with both taps running and the plughole empty. Members pour in and pour out." Fielding echoed this, stating that the NF's "stable membership" was lower than the number of people who have "passed through" it; Taylor suggested that during the 1970s, "at least 12,000" people joined and then left. Many of those attracted to the party because of its anti-immigrationism may have departed on discovering its fascist ideology. In other cases, individuals may have left because the hardship they encountered — social ostracism, job losses, verbal abuse and, on rare occasions, assault — became too much to endure, particularly as the party's fortunes declined in the latter 1970s. The Front refused to disclose the number of members that it had. Thurlow suggested that "the most reliable estimates" were produced by the anti-fascist magazine Searchlight. Searchlight claimed that from its origins with 4,000 members in 1968, the party reached a peak membership of 17,500 in 1972, which had declined to 10,000 in 1979, to 3,148 in 1984 and to 1,000 in 1985. An estimate of party membership in 1989 put adherents of the Flag Group at about 3,000 and of the Strasserite faction at about 600. Even at its 1970s peak, the Front's membership was half that of the BUF during its 1930s heyday. Profile No adequate sociological sampling of NF members took place, but interviews with members were conducted during the 1970s by Taylor, Fielding and Billig. Max Hanna noted that as of 1973, most NF members were "from the skilled working class and lower-middle class" but with variation among branches. Fielding observed that party activism was generally carried out by upper working- and lower middle-class members rather than by their lower working-class and upper middle-class counterparts. Fielding also noted that the party contained individuals of all age ranges, although added that men in their thirties and fifties predominated over those in their forties, suggesting that the latter were typically preoccupied with raising families. Fielding found that NF members were sensitive to ideas that they were "fascistic" or "cranky", instead regarding themselves as "patriots" or "nationalists". He noted that race was the main