Useful Books and Articles on British Fascism

Since Brexit there’s been an alarming rise in racism, which has resulted in a spate of verbal and physical attacks on Blacks, Asians and eastern European immigrants. The openly Nazi fringe has shrunk to a handful of feuding grouplets, whose membership has also fallen dramatically. Unfortunately, these groups have become increasingly radical, and their Nazism and racism is now much more overt. The banned British Nazi youth group, National Action, as I’ve said, used to march about in cod-Nazi uniforms while making speeches full of the Jewish world conspiracy twaddle. And they’re not the only clowns. There’s another Nazi group, which also dresses up in quasi-Nazi gear, and whose leader seems to desperately fancy himself as the new Oswald Mosley.

With this occurring, I though I’d post a piece about some of the books and articles I’ve found useful on the history of British Fascism. These are

Richard Thurlow, Fascism in Britain: A History, 1918-1985 (Oxford: Basil Blackwell 1987).

This is a comprehensive history of British Fascism, from its origins in late 19th century reactionary Conservativism, racial theorising, Eugenics and bizarre evolutionary speculation, to the mid-1980s. The groups covered include notorious anti-Semites like Arnold Leese’s the Britons, the arch-Conservative British Fascisti, who acted like a kind of paramilitary wing for the Tories in attacking trade unionists, members of the Labour party, and other dangerous and subversive working class radicals; the BUF and Oswald Mosley, and other notorious Fascist and radical anti-immigration groups like the League of Empire Loyalists, the BNP, National Front, British Movement, Column 88, and lesser organisations. It has the following chapters

1. The Twilight of the Gods, 1890-1914
2. the Lost Generation, 1914-1932
3 The British Fascists and Conservative Fascism, 1918-1934
4 The Jew Wise, 1918-1939
5 The BUF and British Society, 1932-1939
6 The Boys in Black, 1932-1939
7 The Mutiny against Destiny
8 The Hitler Fan Club
9 Internment, 1939-1945
10 New Wine for Old Bottles, 1945-1960
11 National Socialists and Racial Populists, 1960-1967
12 The Grand Synthesis, 1967-1985
Conclusion: The Sawdust Caesars.

The British parapolitics magazine, Lobster, has also published a number of articles about British Fascism and its denizens. Lobster is a ‘conspiracy’ magazine, but it isn’t about stupid and murderous rantings about Jews and freemasons. This is about real conspiracies and clandestine groups that are documented history, and have been trying covertly to influence British and global politics, such as the various front organisations set up by the CIA during the Cold War and the type of pro-Nazi groups set up and organised by the Republicans in their long campaign against global Communism. The articles on British Fascism are by anti-Fascist writers and activists.

Larry O’Hara published a series of articles, Notes from the Underground on British Fascism from 1974 to 1992. These ran from issues 23-25. Part 1, published in Lobster 23, was on the period 1974-83. Part 2 in Lobster 24 covered the links between British Fascists and their counterparts on the continent, including Steve Brady, the political soldier faction in the NF, the safe-housing of German and Italian Fascists in Britain in 1983, and the plot to bomb the Notting Hill carnival. Part 3 in Lobster 25 covered the four years from 1983 to 1986 including the removal of Martin Webster as the head of the NF and the resignation of Joe Pearce and Nick Griffin,, the attempts by the NF to set up Instant Response Groups to organise rapid campaigns against marches by Irish Republicans, and a brief occupation of the offices of the Daily Mirror. In the same period they also tried to present themselves as Green and eco-friendly, organising demonstrations against vivisection. They also mounted a campaigned against the kosher slaughter of animals. This prefigures the recent campaigns of some of the far right factions against halal slaughter by Muslims. They also tried to set themselves up as being for the miners in the miners’ strike, a series of prosecutions in 1984, which resulted in several of their members being jailed for various offences, and their foiled attempt to infiltrate the National Council for Civil Liberties. O’Hara followed this up in Lobster 29 with an analysis of the NF’s split in 1986. He also wrote a piece in issue 30 examining the possible links between Combat 18 and MI5. He also reviewed the books Contemporary British Fascism: The British National Party and the Quest for Legitimacy, by Nigel Copsey (Palgrave MacMillan 2004) and The Radical Right in Britain by Alan Sykes, (Palgrave MacMillan 2005) in Lobster 49. There was also piece in Lobster 46 by Kevin Coogan on the League of Empire Loyalists and the Defenders of the American Constitution.

The issues from Lobster 58 are online and free to read. Earlier issues are only available in hardcopy, and have to be ordered from the editor, Robin Ramsay.

This obviously is a very limited and dated list of material on modern Fascism. Nevertheless, it helps give the perspective to the contemporary antics of the British Far Right and their campaigns to beat and terrorise people simply because of their ethnicity or colour.

Joshua Bonehill Takes British Far Right Back to Nazi Roots

Joshua ‘Moronic Troll’ Bonehill: Fuehrer without a leaderguard

Remember Joshua Bonehill? Tom Pride over at Pride’s Purge blogged about him a year or so ago. He’s the Hitler wannabe, who boasted at he had at least 20,000 + followers on Twitter. He was trying to set up his own Far Right party and was appealing for men to join his ‘Leader Guard’. This was to be the new Praetorian guard to march with and protect him as Fuehrer of the new British extreme Right. Mr Pride was alarmed as one of his Twitter followers was a British army colonel.

I thought that Bonehill and his dreams of Nazi Fuehrertum were so bonkers that it had to be a wind-up. Surely someone, who was so obviously trying to be early 21st Century’s Britain’s own Adolf couldn’t possibly be serious?

I was wrong.

He was.

Last week was Holocaust memorial week, and the country remembered the liberation of the Nazi Death Camps and the almost unbelievable horror that was perpetuated there. The surviving inmates, some well into their nineties, told their stories.

At the same time this was going, Bonehill was planning a Nazi march against the 20,000 strong Jewish community of Stamford Hill in London. He claimed this was a protest against the ‘Jewification’ of Britain, and particularly against the ultra-Orthodox Haredi community in the area. He claimed the shomrim, a neighbourhood-watch type organisation set up in the Stamford Hill to protect Jewish residents, was actually a religious police.

There’s an interesting article up on Bonehill and his antics at the anti-Far Right site, EDL News. The article’s entitled Moronic Troll Joshua Bonehill and why he probably won’t go to Stamford Hill. The epithet ‘moronic troll’ was given to Bonehill by the BBC. The article suggests that Bonehill won’t actually go on the protest he’s called for. It also gives a list of some of the other weird, disgusting and criminal actions he’s done. It also explains why the Beeb gave him the above nickname. Here they are:

◾ Bonehill attempted to organise a demonstration in Cardiff last year under his National British Resistance Political party. The party consisted of two other people, one with learning difficulties who he scammed for £500. He did not show up, neither did his friends.
◾ His Woolwich Strong t-shirt sales scam saw him allegedly net over £1000. According to our sources, none of the money has been given to the Lee Rigby fund. A grand total of £5 went to Help for Heroes and then rest he put down as administrative costs.
◾ Bonehill’s online popularity seems to stem from spending lots of money buying Facebook likes and Twitter followers from countries such as Pakistan, India and Turkey in order to make himself look more popular. Much of that money went down the pan recently when both Twitter and Facebook kicked him off their networks.
◾ According to locals, Bonehill is allegedly banned from a large supermarket chain nationwide for getting drunk and trying to defecate in the aisle of the cosmetics department, before being forcibly removed by security guards. We cannot corroborate this story ourselves but a number of witnesses have confirmed the story.
◾ Bonehill has a conviction for using his Conservative party membership card to break into a police station and steal uniforms. When caught he assaulted a police officer.
◾ He is allegedly banned from the Mermaid pub in Yeovil after one of the bar maids had him up against the wall by his throat and threw him out for reasons we are unable to disclose. Again, a number of local people have confirmed this.
◾ Drink seems to be a major factor in Bonehill’s life according to most people we spoke to which explains the online bravado exhibited.
◾ He is awaiting sentencing on five charges of harassment and two charges of malicious communications arising from undertaking lengthy and concerted campaigns branding as paedophiles, people who disagreed and outwitted him online (no hard task).
◾ After pleading guilty to a hoax which claimed the Globe Pub in Leicester has refused service to a soldier, the BBC described him as a ‘moronic troll’.

Bonehill is a nasty piece of work, and his organisation is particularly revolting at a time the Jewish community here in Britain and Europe generally is particularly under attack. There is a wave of anti-Semitism rising in Europe, which many observers have described as the worst Jews have experienced since the 1930s. The most obvious example of this was the attack on the customers and staff at a French Jewish supermarket by an Islamist gunman following the attack on Charlie Hebdo the week before last. It should be mentioned here that 15 of the shopper and store clerks were hidden by a Muslim security guard, an act of courage and humanity, which should be given all due credit and respect. It clearly shows that, despite the claims of Islamist terrorists, very definitely not all Muslims share their violent and genocidal racism.

The article’s at http://edlnews.co.uk/2015/02/02/moronic-troll-joshua-bonehill-and-why-he-probably-wont-go-to-stamford-hill/

Jack Renshaw and the BNP

Bonehill, however, isn’t alone on the Far Right in turning to anti-Semitism to shore up their dwindling numbers. According to Hope Not Hate, Jack Renshaw, a young nipper in the BNP is another open Jew-hater. In one of his communiques, he ranted about the Jews encouraging racial mixing in order to destroy the White race as part of a plan to enslave gentiles. It’s the classic Nazi conspiracy fantasy. See the article Big trouble for Little Jack at http://www.hopenothate.org.uk/blog/insider/big-trouble-for-little-jack-4170.

Gary Raikes and the New British Union

Not to be outdone, Gary Raikes of the New British Union is also dragging British Fascism firmly back to the 1930s. His organisation actually has a uniform of black shirt and sweatpants. He himself appears to hold his meeting in full quasi-Nazi regalia, complete with military style cap and surrounded by flags, all emblazoned with the same lightning bolt motif Oswald Mosley used for the British Union of Fascists.

Gary Raikes: New Fuehrer of the New British Union

Oswald Mosley: Old Fuehrer of the BUF on the infamous march in Cable Street.

These tactics are likely to backfire massively on Bonehill, Renshaw, Raikes and the other stormtroopers. While there still is anti-Semitism in British society, there isn’t mass support for a blatantly Nazi party. The horrors of the Third Reich and the Second World War effectively destroyed any mass support Mosley’s BUF may have had. And even before the outbreak of the Second World War, they were struggling to retain their membership, partly due to its notoriety for using violence. Richard Thurlow in his book, Fascism in Britain: A History, 1918-1985, makes the case that the Far Right in Britain only survived into the post-War period by making Black and Asian immigrants the targets of their hate, rather than the Jews. Matthew Collins in his account of his years in the BNP, Hate, records private conversations with some of his fellow stormtroopers, who confided they didn’t understand the hatred of the Jews. Even so, members of the National Front were infamous in the 1970s for dressing up in Nazi uniforms.

One book I read recently by an American historian of the Far Right argued that Fascists, by and large, were never successful as mass movements. In Germany, Spain and Italy they owed their accession to government through deals made with other, established right-wing groups and parties, who hoped they could use these movements to bolster their own position. As for the uniforms, I understood that the wearing of paramilitary, political uniforms had been outlawed in the 1930s. Over in France, one of the main Fascist organisations, the Croix de Feu, found their vote actually increased when they gave up wearing them and began instead to look like an ordinary, mainstream political party.

We shouldn’t be complacent. Although the BNP has effectively collapsed into warring splinter groups, the rise of UKIP shows that xenophobia and racism is still an effective political force. Nevertheless, the return of the various Fascist grouplets to anti-Semitism and paramilitary costumes is likely to repel far, far more people than it attracts. This isn’t the image of a brave, new political force threatening to sweep through Britain. It’s the return of an old, collapsing ideology back to its original, murderous and discredited position.

Joshua Bonehill comes from Yeovil, and a few of the good people of that great Somerset town are so ashamed of the disgrace he’s bringing them that they’ve formed their own anti-Bonehill group on Facebook, Yeovil Against Bonehill.

Dictators in their Own Imaginations: Joshua Bonehill and the National Worker Party

Tom Pride over at Pride’s Purge today posted a piece about Joshua Bonehill, a would-be Fascist leader with about 24,000 followers on Twitter, including one Brigadier-General John E. Michel. He naturally wondered if Michel’s following of the great dictator was merely due to the military gentleman having a laugh, or something more serious. My guess is that it’s probably the former. And Bonehill himself reminds me of the great British Fuhrer, Lt. Colonel Graham Seaton Hutchinson, the head of the 1930s National Worker Party.

Lt. Colonel Hutchinson claimed that his Fascist party had 20,000 members in Mansfield, with many more stormtroopers spread all over Lancashire and other areas. His organisation had its own journal, the National Worker, which had a print run of hundreds of thousands. In the early 1930s he approached Rotha Lintorn’s Orman’s British Fascists with suggestion that the two be merged into a single movement, the British Empire Fascist Party. The British Fascists have been described by Richard Thurlow in his Fascism in Britain: A History, 1918-1986 as ‘a cross between a glorified boy scout movement and a paramilitary group’. It was a Die-Hard Conservative quasi-paramilitary organisation, set up to defend the country from the Socialist menace. Despite Orman’s admiration for Mussolini as the man, who had saved Italy from Socialism, she actually seems to have known very little about Italian Fascism.

The British Fascists collapsed in 1935 when it was declared bankrupt after a series of splits. The first was when a group of 100 left to form the National Fascists and a second occurred when several members split to join Mosley’s BUF. There were plans to turn it into an Ulster Loyalist organisation, as well as another to merge it with the Imperial Fascist League. The proposed merger with the National Worker Party collapsed when it turned out that was indeed well named, and that Lt. Colonel Hutchinson was the Worker of the National Worker Party. There doesn’t seem to have been anyone else.

Bonehill’s group seems to be a similar group, whose massed Fascist legions number exactly one. Looking through his website I couldn’t decide whether he was seriously mentally ill, or actually having a post-modern laugh at the expense of the British Far Right. I suspect that most of his followers are doing so for the same reason. A more sobering thought is that he, and some of his followers, might be in deadly earnest.

Daniel Hannan on Norris McWhirter, Supporter of Fascism

Norris McWhirter, Founder of the Freedom Association and probable supporter of the anti-Semitic and racist League of Empire Loyalists

The extreme Right-wing Conservative MEP, Daniel Hannan, amongst his other attacks on the Left and the NHS, criticised the comedian David Baddiel for his film criticising Norris McWhirter in his online Telegraph column. Baddiel had made the terrible offence of comparing the Freedom Association, which McWhirter founded, to the BNP. Guy Debord’s Cat has also posted a detailed critique of Hannan’s comments, ‘Hannan: McWhirter is a Decent Man (Because I Say So)’ at http://buddyhell.wordpress.com/2010/12/24/hannan-mcwhirter-was-a-decent-man-because-i-say-so/.

In fact Baddiel’s comment about the Freedom Association being similar to the BNP has more than a little truth in the context of McWhirter’s extreme Right-wing political views. There is evidence that McWhirter was a member of the League of Empire Loyalists, a Fascist, anti-Semitic organisation that formed the National Front along with the BNP, the Greater Britain Movement and Racial Preservation Society. Even if he was not formally a member, McWhirter and his brothers subscribed to Candour, the League’s magazine, which attempted to spread its highly conspiracist view of the decline of British civilisation due to a global Jewish conspiracy. It was the same view as that of Adolf Hitler and the Nazi party, with the exception that the Nazis obviously focussed on Germany rather than Britain.

McWhirter and the Aldermaston March

The February 1989 issue of the Freedom Association’s newsletter, Freedom Today, printed a photograph of a car containing Norris McWhirter and his elder brother, Kennedy, surrounded by a crowd of angry CND protesters at the first Aldermaston March in 1958. The photograph was supposed to show the violent nature of peace marchers. According to the Times the McWhirters had appeared at the march in a car shouting at the crowd through a loudspeaker. They told the demonstrators that they were each guilty of increasing the threat of war and voting with their feet for ‘Soviet imperialist domination’. They then turned into a field, where they got out and attempted to display their own placards. They then scuffled with some of the marchers, and were forced to get back into the car. The marchers then started to rock it. The police eventually appeared, and managed to get the McWhirters and their car out of the crowd and away from the demonstration.

McWhirter and the LEL

Norris McWhirter stood as the Conservative candidate for Orpington in 1964. However, it looks very much like that if they weren’t formal members of the League of Empire Loyalists, they supported them sufficiently strongly to take part in some of their stunts. George Thayer in his book, The British Political Fringe: A Profile, published in 1965 stated that as the League supported nuclear weapons they ‘made a habit of harassing the Aldermaston marches’. Rosine D’Bouneviallel, a member of the League with custody of their records, confirmed that the incident was one of the LEL stunts. She did not state that the McWhirters were members of the League, but did say that they subscribed to candour.

See ‘Kennedy McWhirter 22/10/23 – 3/11/89’ in Stephen Dorril, ‘Gone but not Forgotten’, in Lobster 19: 10-13 (11).

A.K. Chesterton and the League of Empire Loyalists

The League of Empire Loyalists was founded in October 1954 by Arthur Keith (A.K.) Chesterton, a cousin of the writer G.K. Chesterton, and one of the ideologues of Oswald Mosley’s British Union of Fascists. Its members including the future leaders of the National Front and related Fascist organisations, John Tyndall, Martin Webster, Colin Jordan and John Bean. It Strongly campaigned against any infringement of British sovereignty, including British involvement in a future EU or federated Europe, as well as the UN, NATO, SEATO and CENTO. It also demanded that Britain should not relinquish its Empire, but should continue to maintain and strengthen it. It also demanded that Non-White immigration to the UK should be stopped.

Chesterton, Anti-Semitism and Fascism

Chesterton split from Mosley and the BUF in 1938, and supported the British war effort against Nazi Germany. He was thus, unlike Mosley, never charged with treason. He was, however, extremely anti-Semitic. Apart from the BUF, he was also a member of the Nordic League, whose membership also included Serocold Skeels, a known Nazi agent, and William Joyce, Lord Haw Haw. Like the Nazis, the Nordic League also demanded the extermination of the Jews, and Chesterton fully shared their vile views. Chesterton later wrote a pamphlet attacking the leader of the BUF, complaining that Mosley had been deceived by the leader of one of the other factions within the BUF, which itself had become a parody of German Nazism. The pamphlet was published by the National Socialist League, the similarity of whose name to Hitler’s party was certainly not accidental. After the War Chesterton retreated from the genocidal implications of earlier extreme anti-Semitism, through his opposition to Nazism and friendship with individual Jews like Joseph Leftwich. He denounced the racial anti-Semitism of Houston Steward Chamberlain and the Nazi ideologue, Alfred Rosenberg, and demanded that those responsible for the death camps should be hanged. Like Mosley he also strenuously denied that he was a Fascist after the War.

Anti-Semitic Conspiracy Theories and the LEL

Chesterton was a professional journalist. He was the deputy editor of the Fascist magazine, Truth, from 1944 to 1953. In 1953 he was also literary adviser to Lord Beaverbrook, and founded the anti-Semitic newspaper, Candour. Chesterton was strongly influenced by the anti-Semitic conspiracy theories of Father Denis Fahey, A.N. Field, Douglas Reed, C.H. Douglas and Nesta Webster. He believed that Jewish financier and bankers, controlled by Bernard Baruch and Paul and Max Warburg, had been responsible for funding all the social unrest around the globe from the Russian Revolution onwards. The Bretton Woods and Dumbarton Oaks agreements, along with the World Bank, Council on Foreign Relations, the Bilderberg Group, Trilateral Commission and United Nations were part of a plot to establish a global Jewish ‘One World’ superstate and destroy the British Empire. In his 1965 book, The New Unhappy Lords, Chesterton made it clear that he believed that global Communism was merely a subordinate branch of this international conspiracy. Moscow and Peking were, he declared, merely ‘branch offices’, while the headquarters of the conspiracy was in New York. Despite his denial that he was a Fascist, and disapproval of political violence, this is very much the same conspiratorial view as Hitler’s, except that it was updated to include the new, post-War supranational organisations.

Political Stunts

The League attempted to spread its vile ideas not by marches or demonstrations, but through a series of disruptive stunts. Amongst these were the blowing of bugle horns at Conservative party conferences. When Krushchev and Bulganin arrived at Victoria Station as part of their détente peace tours of the West, the League’s members shouted that Anthony Eden had shaken hands with a murderer. They also gatecrashed the 1958 Anglican Lambeth Conference disguised as Greek Orthodox bishops. As racist imperialists, they also disrupted meetings of the Movement for Colonial Freedom and the Anti-Slavery Society.

Whatever Hannan says about McWhirter, it is clear that he had some extremely unpleasant Right-wing views, which could fairly be described as Fascistic. If he was indeed a subscriber to Candour, as claimed by the keeper of the LEL’s records, then he was clearly at least one of their fellow travellers. He may not have formally joined the League out of a desire to maintain his membership of the Tories. After their disruptive antics at the 1958 Tory party conference led to fighting between the conference’s stewards and members of the Leagues, the Conservatives took strong measures to throw out League sympathisers. The Freedom Association has also supported brutal and repressive extreme Right-wing dictatorships, so Baddiel actually was right to compare the Freedom Association to the BNP and attack the noxious views of its founder. And by his own support for McWhirter, Hannan has also shown how extreme his own political views are.

For further information on the League of Empire Loyalists, see Kevin Koogan, ‘The League of Empire Loyalists’ in Lobster 46, Winter 2003, pp. 26-9, and Richard Thurlow, Fascism in Britain: A History, 1918-1985 (Oxford: Basil Blackwell Ltd 1987).

Fascist Leader Mosley Wrote for Daily Telegraph

Oswald Mosley, Baronet, Politician and wannabe British Fascist Duce. Also Telegraph journalist.

Reading through Richard Thurlow’s Fascism in Britain: A History, 1918-1985, I found this interesting snippet about the British Fascist leader, Oswald Mosley. Interned as a threat to national security during the War, Mosley was effectively a pariah afterwards. His attempt to launch a new Fascist party, the Union Movement, to succeeded the British Union of Fascists and National Socialists failed, and he ended up moving first to Ireland and then to France. He was partly rehabilitated with the publication in 1968 of his autobiography, My Life. He then went on to write the occasional book review for Books and Bookmen and the Daily Telegraph.

Somehow, I am not at all surprised about the latter.