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Britain:
For King and Country
From
'Hurrah for the Blackshirts' to 'Maggie's Militant Tendency'
"Herr
Chancellor, on behalf of the British Government I congratulate you on
crushing communism in Germany and standing as a bulwark against
Russia" (1a)
- Lord Halifax then British Deputy Prime Minister (later Foreign
Secretary) addressing Adolf Hitler, November 1937.
King
Edward the 8th/Duke of Windsor shares a joke
with Hitler
The
first avowedly fascist organisation in Britain was the 'British Fascisti'
(later just plain old 'British Fascists') formed in 1923. Largely
comprised of military officers it was little more than a strong arm squad
for the Conservative Party, stewarding Conservative meetings and calling
for votes for the Conservative Party. One of their few policies was, as a
means of reducing unemployment, a demand for a reduction in income tax so
that rich people could hire more servants. During the General Strike of
1926 they served as scabs, through this they acquired a martyr when one of
their members scabbing on the railways lent too far out a window and was
decapitated by a bridge. They also worked as agents for Special Branch and
M.I.5. However in 1920's Britain admiration for Fascism mostly meant
admiration for the Italian Government rather than agitating for Fascism in
Britain.
The
modern and most worrying form of fascism, is the hidden groups of planning
officers who secretly control development in our towns and
countryside. Planning permission is granted to friends as favours,
while less privileged members of the community are denied permission, and
worse still enforced against with such fervor as to financially ruin
them. Before the advent of the Human Rights Act 1998, there was almost
nothing one could do to protect one's home and the right to peaceful
enjoyment.
Council
committees sit in private to discuss ways to stop private citizens
enjoying their right to a home. They act as quasi courts,
effectively sentencing the private citizen to endless rounds of appeals
and litigation, without the citizen ever knowing - or having the chance to
speak out, or see the evidence on which their rights are being usurped.
Planning
officers work hand in hand with pet solicitors to deceive committee
members who are not infected with their obsession to see their patch (area
of authority) inhabited by the right sort (according to them). Committee
members asking for information in support of officer calls for action, are
routinely denied access and otherwise obstructed, such as to wear them
down. These are the warning signs. There should be zero
tolerance to this kind of abuses of position. That is why we are
calling for new law as identified by Lord
Nolan.
As
Sir Winston Churchill put it:
"If
I had been an Italian, I am sure that I should have been wholeheartedly
with you [Mussolini] from start to finish in your triumphant struggle
against the bestial appetites and passions of Leninism"
(Churchill's misnomer for working class resistance)
"But
in England we have not had to fight this danger in the same deadly form.
We have our way of doing things"(1)
According
to historian A.J.P. Taylor:
"Every
politician extolled the virtues of democracy, especially at the expense
of Soviet Russia. Despite this rhetoric, MacDonald wrote friendly
personal letters to the Fascist dictator Mussolini; Austen Chamberlain
exchanged photographs with him and joined him in family holidays;
Churchill sang his praises in newspaper articles" (2)
It
was in the 1930's that British Fascism had it's first and so far only
flowering in the form of Sir Oswald Mosley's British Union of Fascists
formed on the first of October 1932. Mosley who had moved from the Tory
Party to the Labour left to Fascism, formed the 'January Club' a sort of
discussion group/ front organisation to attract Establishment types to his
Blackshirt movement.
Devotees
of the January Club included Wing-Commander Sir Louis Greig, Lord Erskine
a Conservative-Unionist M.P. and assistant Government whip, Lord William
Scott brother of the 8th Duke of Buccleuch and Conservative-Unionist M.P.,
Lord William Scott who was Secretary of State for War from 1900 to 1903
and Secretary of State for India from 1903 to 1905 and Lord and Lady
Russell of Liverpool.
The
B.U.F. began to receive support from the influential Conservative press in
the form of Media Baron Lord Rothermore, who's paper the 'Daily Mail'
backed Mosley enthusiastically, beginning with the infamous 'Hurrah for
the Blackshirts' headline of the 8th of January 1934. Lady Houstons
'Saturday Review' was also outspoken in its endorsement of England's would
be Fuehrer.
According
to the 'Daily Mail' of the 15th of January 1934, the British Union of
Fascists was:
"a
well organised party of the right ready to take over responsibility for
national affairs with the same directness of purpose and energy of
method as Hitler and Mussolini have displayed"(3)
Writing
in the 'Daily Mail' of the 25th of April 1934, Colonel Thomas Moore, a
Conservative M.P. pointed out that:
"Surely
there cannot be any fundamental difference of outlook between the
Blackshirts and their parents, the Conservatives"(4)
Rothermore
also expressed support for Germany's Nazi movement. Consider the following
from the 'Daily Mail' of September 24th 1930:
"These
young Germans have discovered, as I am glad to note the young men and
women of England are discovering, that it is no good trusting to the old
politicians. Accordingly they have formed, as I would like to see our
British youth form, a Parliamentary party of their own. . . We can do
nothing to check this movement [the Nazi's] and I believe it would be a
blunder for the British people to take up an attitude of hostility
towards it. . . We must change our conception of Germany. . .The older
generation of Germans were our enemies. Must we make enemies of this
younger generation too?" (5)
In
November 1933 he wrote that:
"The
sturdy young Nazi's are Europe's guardians against the Communist
danger"(6)
Similar
sentiments were voiced in the House of Commons, on the 24th of July 1934
William
P.C. Greene, Conservative party M.P. for Worchester and a landowner in
Australia asked:
"Is
it not a fact that ninety per cent of those accused of attacking
Fascists rejoice in fine old British names such as Ziff, Kernstein and
Minsky" (7)
F.A.
Macquisten Conservative M.P. with business interests in Rhodesia replied:
"Were
some of them called Feigenbaum, Goldstein and Rigotsky and other good old
Highland names" (8)
Nor
was this the only display of parliamentary anti-semitism at the time,
following Hitler's rise to power Edward Doran Conservative-Unionist M.P.
for
Tottenham
North had this to say:
"in
view of the present situation in Germany would the Home Secretary take
steps to prevent any alien Jews entering this country from
Germany"(9)
On
the 14th of June 1934 during the parliamentary debate following the
anti-fascist disruption of the B.U.F. rally at the Olympia, Micheal
Beaumont
Conservative
M.P. for Aylesbury who described himself as
"an
avowed anti-democrat"
said
of the B.U.F. that there was a lot of
"respectable,
reasonable and intelligent people" [in it] (10)
H.K.
Hayles Conservative M.P. for Hanley said that the B.U.F. contained:
"some
of the most cultured members of our society" (11)
Admiration
for Germany's Nationalist Socialist totalititarian dictatorship continued
throughout the 1930's. Lord Londonderry, Secretary of State for Air from
1931 to 1935 became from early 1936 onwards an outspoken supporter of the
Hitler regime.
As
was Britain's last Liberal Party Prime Minister Lloyd George.
"Lloyd
George had an undisguised admiration for the German leader which was
gradually transformed as the months went by into an intense admiration.
'Hitler' he continually remarked in private 'is a great man'" (12)
The
most notorious episode of British Establishment Nazi loving was that of
King Edward the 8th/Duke of Windsor. This execrable piece of royal vermin:
-
Paid
a personal visit to Hitler in 1937.
-
Conspired
with Nazi agents during, before and after the Second World War.
-
Deserted
his post in France in 1940 and fled to Franco's Spain where he lived
at the Ritz in Madrid.
-
Suggested
to the Nazi Government that prolonged bombing of Britain would bring
about peace by negotiation.
In
fact Hitler had planned to reinstate Edward on the British throne as a
puppet ruler following a German victory. According to a recent Channel 4
documentary, when Edward was interviewed in 1941 while he was governor of
the Bahamas he said that:
"Hitler
was the right and logical leader for the German people, it would be a
tragedy if he was overthrown"
This
line of thinking was still alive on the Home Front too, in 1940 M.I.5.
investigated the 'Right Club' a crypto-Nazi outfit headed by Conservative
M.P. Captain Maule Ramsay.
Indeed
early in 1940/late in 1939 prominent member of the British establishment
Lord Lloyd of Dolobrian , later a minister in Churchill's war cabinet ,
wrote a pamphlet entitled 'The British Case' , which explicitly rejected
the notion of a war against Fascism ( a concept which later became a
necessary part of mobilising the population for Total War after the fall
of France ) and this rather than just reflecting Lord Lloyd's viewpoint ,
had a preface written by the aforementioned Lord Halifax, then Secretary
of State for Foreign Affairs. In 'The British Case' Lord Lloyd writes:
"Our
most ancient and faithful ally , Portugal , enjoys today greater
prosperity than ever before in the modern world under the wise but
authoritarian government of senhor Salazar. The government of Poland
itself was definitely authoritarian . Above all , the Italian genius has
developed , in characteristic Fascist institutions, a highly authoritarian
regime which , however , threatens neither religious nor economic freedom
, or the security of other European nations." (12a) This was of
course before the Italian state entered the war.
LEAGUE
OF EMPIRE LOYALISTS
Established
in 1954 by A.K. Chesterton who had been Director of Publicity and
Propaganda in the B.U.F., according to historian Roger Eatwell:
"Most
of it's 2000-3000 active members were Colonel Blimpish rather than
fascist: in fact many of it's members saw it as a Conservative ginger
group . . . an attempt to keep the Conservatives true to the Imperial
way."(13)
In
1967 the League is amalgamated with the British National Party and the
Racial Preservation Society forming the National Front to which John
Tyndall lead his Greater British Movement into a few months later. Tyndall
formerly of the
National
Socialist Movement is now head of today's British National Party (or B.N.P.)
. A.K. Chesterson was leader of the National Front from 1967 to 1972.
MONDAY
CLUB
The
Monday Club was formed on the first of January 1961 as an anti-Decolonisation
pressure group within the Conservative Party. It was strongly supportive
of the Apartheid-style regime in Rhodesia and very much anti-immigration.
Moved close to the National Front in the early 70's a process which
culminated in N.F. members stewarding a Monday Club anti-immigration rally
in September 1972. The year 1972 was the high water mark for the Monday
Club, whose membership then included approximately 36 Tory M.P.'s. The
next year there was an open clash for the control of the group between the
far-right faction led by Jonathon Guinness, son of Sir Oswald Mosley's
second wife and the extreme far-right faction led by G.K. Young former
deputy director of M.I.6. Jonathon Guinness won and became head of the
Monday Club.
TORY
ACTION
The
following year Young set up Tory Action, a secretive outfit membership of
which is only open to Conservative Party members of two or more years
standing.
Tory
Action is explicitly racist and at one stage(1981) claimed it had the
support of two dozen Conservative M.P.'s.
THE
CONSERVATIVE PARTY AND THE NATIONAL FRONT
The
early 1970's were a period of time which saw a closeness between the
far-right within the Conservative Party and it's external rivals which had
not been seen since the days of the British Fascists. The decision by
Edward Heath
then
Tory leader and Prime Minister to allow 30,000 Asians who had been
expelled from Uganda to settle in Britain provoked outrage. Ray Hill,
former National
Front
member relates that:
"In
the pantheon of traitors to white race and nation, the Prime Minister
quickly achieved pride of place. Rarely can a party leader have been so
deeply hated by so many grassroots members of his own party. The
consequences for the party were fairly serious. . . . there was a
sizeable haemorrhage of middle-level party activists. Many tore up their
cards in disgust and cast around for another vehicle which gave truer
expression to their views on race and immigration. Almost invariably,
that vehicle was the National Front." (14)
At
the same time the N.F. were receiving Conservative support from another
direction and in any other way, according to historian Roger Eatwell:
"a
substantial sum of money seems to have arrived in the party [N.F.]
coffers from sources rumoured to be close to the Tory right" (15)
This
must be seen in context for as well as the anti-immigration issue these
years, as with those during which the British Fascists operated, had a
relatively high level of class struggle. With the rise to power of
Margaret Thatcher and the marginalistion of the N.F. the tide began to
flow in the other direction those Tories who had defected to the extra-paralimantary
right returned to the Conservative fold.
BRITISH
LEAGUE OF RIGHTS
In
1971 the British League of Rights is founded with Tory Party and Monday
Club member Lady Jane Birdwood as General Secretary and Air Vice-Marshall
Bennett as patron. B.L.R. membership secretary Mary Downtown attended the
annual international Fascist rally at the Waffen S.S. graveyard in
Diksmuide in Belgium in 1980. Interviewed there by the 'News of the
World', she reportedly said:
"I
want to see a Fourth Reich and we all want the blacks and the Jews out
of this country" (16)
B.L.R.
offshoot, the British League for European Freedom became the British
branch of the World Anti-Communist League in 1974 but was expelled in a
purge of anti-Jewish groups in the early eighties.
PRIVATE
ARMIES
In
1973 the aforementioned G.K. Young together with former M.I.6. officer
Anthony Cavendish, Ross McWhirter who was later assassinated by the I.R.A.
and General (retd.) Sir Walter Walker Commander in Chief of N.A.T.O. forces
in Northern Europe from '69 to '72, came together to establish Unison.
Unison was to be a movement of volunteers ready to takeover the running of
essential services should red subversion bring chaos in it's wake. Walker
later broke away and formed his own volunteer outfit Civil Assistance. Sir
David Stirling , the creator of the S.A.S. , proposed his own version of
Unison called G.B.75 in May 1974.How real these organisations were is not
known. Perhaps these paranoiac Colonel Blimps saw in the 1972 miners
strike which brought down the Heath administration and in the arrival of
the age of the urban guerrilla that long dreaded Red Dawn. Perhaps they
were part of a covert campaign to destabilise the Labour Government as has
been alleged. In any case neither Unison, Civil Assistance or G.B.75
lasted long.
FEDERATION
OF CONSERVATIVE STUDENTS
Many
youth wings have a habit of being more radical than their parent body and
this lot are no exception. A fine upstanding body of Hooray Henrys members
of who wore badges with slogans such as 'Victory to the U.D.A.'. This lot
caused such outrage that Conservative Central Office had them disbanded in
the summer of '87. Previous to this, two F.C.S. members at Nottingham
University, one of whom was also vice-chairman of the University
Conservative Association were barred from the campus after painting up
Nazi slogans such as "Death to Jews".
Another
controversy was the defection of two F.C.S. members to the openly Nazi
British National Party. One of the M.P.'s who rallied to defend the F.C.S.
during it's run in with Central Office was Neil Hammilton (later at the
centre of the Cash for Questions scandal) a former vice-President of F.C.S.
and guest at the 1972 conference of Movimiento Sociale Italiano - the
Italian Fascist Party, the direct descendants of Mussolini(in some cases
literally).
WESTERN
GOALS (U.K.)
This
was the child of an American organisation the Western Goals Foundation
which was instrumental in the mobilising of U.S. establishment support for
Nicaragua's Contras. The U.K. branch was formed in May 1985 and it's
initial Parliamentary Advisory Board included our very own Rev. Martin
Smyth M.P. for South Belfast, who was also a vice-president of the group .
Western Goals soon took up campaigning against allegedly left-wing
charities such as Oxfam and War on Want, and exposing Labour Left
candaidaties such as Ken Livingstone as 'extremists' during the 1987
election campaign. In 1988 they helped organise a visit to Britain by
Jonas Savimbi leader of Angola's U.N.I.T.A. &endash; a armed rebel
group and proxy for U.S. and Chinese imperialism. The next year they
brought over the head (Andries Treunicht) and the foreign affairs
spokesman (Clive Derby-Lewis) of the pro-Apartheid and white supremacist
South African Conservative Party.
Their
international affairs plummeted to even greater depths when Major Roberto
D'Aubuisson of El Salvador's Arena Party became their honorary patron.
D'Aubuisson was the prime mover behind the death squads who according to
the United Nations Commission on Human Rights murdered 20,000 civilians
between January 1980 and May 1981.(Mostly Trade Unionists and grass roots
activists).
Neither
did Western Goals neglect forging links with the European far-right, they
organised a fringe meeting at the 1989 Conservative Party conference at
which French M.E.P. Yvan Blot of Le Pen's Front Nationale spoke from the
same platform as the above mentioned Clive Derby-Lewis who became a vice
President of the group and their delegate to a World Anti-Communist League
conference in 1990. Western Goals also voiced support for Germany's ultra
right Republicans who were then led by Waffen S.S. veteran Franz
Schonhuber.
REVOLUTIONARY
CONSERVATIVE CAUCUS
The
Revolutionary Conservative Caucus was founded in 1992 after the
disintegration of Western Goals. In their own words they stood for 'Racial
Purity and Ruthless Elitism'. Three former key members of the National
Front's executive soon became involved. They were Tom Acton, Steve Brady
and Mark Cotterill. However the Revolutionary Conservative Caucus did not
last very long.
RIGHT
NOW!
Right
Now! is a magazine which has stepped into the vacuum left by the collapse
of the Revolutionary Conservative Caucus, taking up the banner of the
respectable far-right . This delightful little rag includes articles
advocating the break up of the U.S.A. into several Yugoslavia-style
ethnically pure states and praising France's would be Fuehrer Le Pen,
forced labour for prisoners and bring back hanging is the standard line.
Interviewed
in a 1995 issue of Right Now! is none other than Democratic Unionist party
deputy leader and M.P. for East Belfast Peter Robinson he of the invasion
of Monaghan fame. The Rev. Martin Smyth M.P. has spoken at meetings
organised by
Right
Now! in the House of Commons as has Robinson. At least eight Tory M.P.'s
have associated themselves with Right Now! including Sir Richard Body
whose November 21st 1995 talk at a Right Now! meeting was described in the
magazine thus:
"Sir
Richard reminded us of the difficulties usually faced by federal,
polyethnic, multilingual, multicultural states, citing the example of
Yugoslavia as what can happen at worst, and pointing darkly to the
present stresses and strains in the United States and Australia, as
indicators of trouble ahead as their Anglo-Saxon culture is supplanted
by other, less tolerant, cultures" (17)
Smyth
and Robinson aren't Right Now!'s only Irish connection it's editor Derrick
Turner (or Derek as he has anglicised his name) was leader of a now
defunct Irish fascist outfit named Social Action Initiative. Turner was
investigated by the Garda in 1988, at the time he was working at a Naval
base in Co.Cork and was suspected of giving Naval secrets to the U.D.A. .
During the investigation it was revealed he had met National Front leaders
at the U.D.A.'s Belfast H.Q.
MONARCHIST
LEAGUE:
The
Monarchist League argues for the hereditary principle in the ordering of
society and the state. It's General Secretary until 1992 was Gregory
Launder-Frost. Mr Launder Frost was also involved in the Monday Club and Western
Goals (U.K.).
Gregory
Lauder-Frost is also the author of numerous articles on genealogy.
He is currently a member of the Society of Genealogists, London (26
years), the Scottish Genealogy Society, Edinburgh, (22 years); the Borders
Family History Society and a Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries,
Scotland.
(1a)
Quoted in Labour and Trade Union Review No.84
(1)
Quoted in 'Fellow Travellers of the Right' by Richard Griffiths page 14
and 15.
(2)
Ibid. page 14.
(3)
Ibid.
(4)
Ibid.
(5)
Quoted in 'Who Financed Hitler' by James and Suzanne Pool page 315.
(6)
Quoted in 'Fellow Travellers of the Right" by Richard Griffiths page
164.
(7)
Ibid. page 88.
(8)
Ibid. page 88.
(9)
Ibid. page 81.
(10)
Ibid. page 54.
(11)
Ibid. page 54.
(12)
Ibid.
(12a)
Quoted in 'The Chamberlain-Hitler Collusion' by Alvin Finkel and Clement
Leibovitz.
(13)
'Fascism: A History' by Roger Eatwell page 265.
(14)
'The Other Face of Terror: Inside Europe's Neo-Nazi Network' by Ray Hill
with Andrew Bell page 76.
(15)
'Fascism: A History' by Roger Eatwell page 267.
(16)
Quoted in 'The Bigger Tory Vote' by Nick Toczek page 18.
(17)
'Right Now!' issue 11 December '95/January '96 page 9.
"Don't
be content with things as they are, the earth is yours and the fullness
thereof"
Sir
Winston Churchill
Winston Churchill would turn in his grave if he visited the
corruption in planning and legal departments across the
country..................
Winston Churchill -
The master statesman stood alone against fascism and
renewed the world's faith in the superiority of democracy. If he was
alive today, we feel sure he would table a motion to pass Lord Nolan's recommended
legislation.
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