British Fascism After the Holocaust

From the Birth of Denial to the Notting Hill Riots 1939–1958

Joe Mulhall

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2020
• ISBN:
  9780429840258
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Fascism & Totalitarianism
• Index: Politics & International Relations

This book explores the policies and ideologies of a number of individuals and groups who attempted to relaunch fascist, antisemitic and racist politics in the wake of World War II and the Holocaust.

Despite the leading architects of fascism being dead and the newsreel footage of Jewish bodies being pushed into mass graves seared into societal consciousness, fascism survived World War II and, though changed, survives to this day. Britain was the country that 'stood alone' against fascism, but it was no exception. This book treads new historical ground and shines a light onto the most understudied period of British fascism, whilst simultaneously adding to our understanding of the evolving ideology of fascism, the persistent nature of antisemitism and the blossoming of Britain's anti-immigration movement.

This book will primarily appeal to scholars and students with an interest in the history of fascism, antisemitism and the Holocaust, racism, immigration and postwar Britain.

1

The unbroken thread

British fascism during World War II

While the end of the war didn’t mean the end of fascism, it did mean the death of most of Europe’s fascist leaders. Across large parts of the continent the fascist movement was left in ruins, its architecture turned to rubble, its reputation indelibly tied to the gas chambers of Auschwitz. Yet in one place the movement remained surprisingly intact, hidden away for the war years, able to survive: Great Britain. If one is to properly understand postwar fascism it is imperative to understand the experience of British far-right and fascist activists between 1939 and 1945, which significantly and lastingly affected the nature of fascism in Britain. One thing that is clear is that for the fascists, the Britain that existed after the war was different and notably more hostile than the one of the prewar period. However, while the world had changed around them they emerged surprisingly unchanged.

The early war years

The two events that most historians point to as ending interwar British fascism were doubtlessly major challenges that did threaten the survival of the movement. The first was the declaration of war against Germany in September 1939. The second was the mass internment without trial under Defence Regulation 18B and the subsequent proscription of Mosley’s British Union in July 1940. The start of the war resulted in the disbanding of a number of radical right and pro-Nazi organisations. Some completely disbanded while others simply ceased public activity.¹ William Joyce’s National Socialist League was dissolved in August 1939, and pro-German organisations such as the Anglo-German Fellowship and the Link also officially folded. The influential Nordic League publicly ceased activity though leading members continued to meet until the internment of Oliver Gilbert on 22 September.² A.K. Chesterton’s short-lived group British Vigil crawled on for several months but also joined the list of deceased groups in January of 1940.³ In addition the activities of those organisations that did survive were greatly reduced. Many of the B.U.F. offices around the country were closed down, as was the headquarters of the Imperial Fascist League at Balls Pond Road, Dalston, which closed with the swastikas that adorned the outside being painted over.⁴

With the outbreak of war on 3 September the primary concern of Britain’s fascist activists, many left without an official political vehicle, was to bring a prompt end to the war. The inevitability of hostilities had been evident for some time, and a symbiosis between the fascists and the Peace movement had been evolving. Extraordinarily the Chairman of the Peace Pledge Union (PPU) became a member of the pro-Nazi and antisemitic organisation The Link. The PPU’s determination to avoid and to oppose war led some to jettison their moral compass and form alliances with domestic fascism. In addition, many British fascists realised that war with their ideological comrades in Germany could ruin the movement irrevocably and pushed peace to the very forefront of their activity. Many found the PPU a convenient, legal and less controversial organisation in which to pursue their aims. Upon the closure of the notorious Nordic League at the start of the war all members were advised to join the PPU,⁵ which found its ranks rapidly swelling with fascist sympathisers. Many rank-and-file PPU members would no doubt have been horrified by this infiltration of fascists, but there is little doubt that leaders of both movements worked in conjunction on the peace campaign.

No stranger to PPU meetings was John Beckett, who as well as being a former Labour MP had been a leading member of the BUF and the founder of the British People’s Party.⁶ The severing of cordial relations with Germany saw him throw his considerable talents towards the anti-war movement. Along with Captain Robert Gordon-Canning – another old BUF supporter and key member of the BPP – and Admiral Domvile and several supporters of his now deceased pro-German organisation The Link, Beckett set up the British Council for a Christian Settlement in Europe (BCCSE). Having only set up the BPP in April 1939,⁷ Beckett placed its full resources behind the new BCCSE,⁸ giving some indication of the primacy of the anti-war campaign in the minds of many British fascists. Beckett became Secretary, the Duke of Bedford Chairman, Captain Gordon-Canning its treasurer,⁹ and the operation was based out of Ben Green’s Berkhamstead home.¹⁰ Beckett’s journey from Labour MP to prominent fascist was well known, yet despite the obviously fascist origins of the organisation the BCCSE managed to court a broad church of supporters from across the political spectrum. Their Statement on the European Situation, which called for an end to the war, is adorned with a peculiar mix of signatures that ranged from prominent fascist and pro-Nazi sympathisers, through to the Labour MP Richard Stokes. The PPU supported the new endeavour¹¹ as did an assortment of aristocrats such as the Earl of Mar and Lady Stalbridge.

While peace campaigning was thrust to the forefront, Britain’s fascist movement by no means completely jettisoned its commitment to antisemitism. It is important to note that during the war years The Britons Publishing Society printed two editions of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, one in 1941 and another in 1942.¹² Indeed, antisemitism and peace campaigning were combined. On 23 May 1939 the BPP had launched the People’s Campaign Against War and Usury.¹³ With ‘usury’ a thinly veiled synonym for Jews, the campaign was an example of how the fascist movement saw an intrinsic link between the war and Jews. As difficult as it is to grasp in a post-Holocaust age, the narrative being proposed by Britain’s far right during the war was that it had been fostered by Jews as an act of revenge against the Germans.¹⁴ As one Right Club leaflet put it, ‘the stark truth is that this war was plotted and engineered by the Jews for world-power and vengeance’.¹⁵ Outside of Beckett and Bedford’s BCCSE there remained active factions on Britain’s far right working to bring an end to the war by exposing its ‘Jewish roots’.

Between the start of war and the proscription of the British Union in May 1940, a considerable, if significantly reduced, amount of open and public fascist activity continued. The British Union, ‘Jock’ Houston’s Nationalist Association, the Militant Christian Patriots and even some of the remnants of the Imperial Fascist League¹⁶ continued their regular public meetings. Though some speakers significantly tempered their public rhetoric for fear of internment, vociferous and vocal antisemitism was often on display.¹⁷ Meanwhile ‘Jock’ Houston of the Nationalist Association could regularly be heard from the platform praising King Edward I for expelling the Jews in 1290, referencing the Protocols of Zion and calling for the deportation of all British Jews to Madagascar.¹⁸ Most of these meetings involved between 200 and 500 people with notable exceptions such as the BUF meeting in Bethnal Green in November 1939, which drew around 2,000¹⁹ and another at Manchester Free Trade hall in February 1940, which had 2,500 people, 60% of whom were reported to have given the fascist salute.²⁰ However, by June 1940 a combination of public hostility and an increasingly oppressive state all but brought public street meetings to an end,²¹ and they were not to be seen again on Britain’s streets until 1944.

However, anti-war campaigning and public antisemitism persisted despite the start of the war; the first major blow struck against British fascism had been survived. However, the actions of another of Britain’s surviving far-right organisations were to lead to the second major blow, namely the mass expansion of the use of Defence Regulation 18B. The Right Club, formed in May 1939 by the Conservative MP and virulent antisemitic convert Captain Archibald Ramsay, was set up with the primary aim of exposing ‘the activities of organized Jewry’ and to ‘clear the Conservative Party of Jewish influence’.²² The first nine months of the war were transformative for the Right Club with it simultaneously shrinking in size while becoming more extreme. It moved away from its original stated aims of purging the Tory Party, becoming an altogether more subversive organisation that disseminated antisemitic and pro-Nazi propaganda.²³ Due to the astute work of Maxwell Knight, a former member of the Fascisti turned MI5 spymaster and three talented female spies, a link between the Right Club – a cipher clerk at the American Embassy, Tyler Kent – and the Italian Embassy w...