After the Second World War there was a revival in the fascists' fortunes and they embarked on a new wave of terror against the Jewish community. Fascists attempted to burn down synagogues in Clapton, Dollis Hill, Willesden and Bristol. Members of a gang named after the American Ku Klux Klan sent hate mail to MPs and local papers, boasting of a violent assault which they had carried out against an elderly Jewish man. Three fascists were each jailed for 28 days following an unprovoked assault on a group of young Jews. One fascist speaker, David Barrows, was arrested after he waved a gun at one of his own open-air meetings. In May 1949, a gang of at least 20 fascists attacked two young Jewish boys, Raymond Keen and Henry Freedman, with bottles and other weapons, and the two boys were badly hurt. Meanwhile fascist parties openly encouraged these attacks. Yet with what we know now of the war and the Holocaust, it seems extraordinary that fascism could be reborn after 1945. So what happened? How was British fascism revived?
Part of the answer is that fascism had never really gone away. Although the British Union of Fascists was closed down following a series of arrests in 1940, fascist groups continued to operate in many areas. The BUF was able to retain its records for safekeeping under a bridge in Hackney, and in storage in Eaton Square and Westbourne Grove. The wartime isolation of the fascists may even have helped to bind them together. In their wartime internment, fascists continued to meet and read and develop their politics. Members of the BUF retained a mystical belief in their leader Sir Oswald Mosley.
Trevor Grundy, whose parents were active fascists, describes the fanatical awe that ordinary fascists felt for Mosley, in his book, Beyond The Pale, Nicholas Mosley, Oswald's eldest son, said that he went to an East End pub with Mosley and Diana [Mosley] and experienced what it was like to walk into a room with his father and how some of Mosley's supporters touched him to gain strength or power. He was right. It was just like that. My mother used to touch him and she'd say afterwards at home: "That will give me strength till next year."
1949 Anti-fascists demonstrate outside Kensington Town Hall
The fascists were also helped by a brief revival in antisemitism after 1945. Following the bomb attacks on the Kind David Hotel and the killing of the two British sergeants at Netanya, there were large anti-Jewish riots in August 1947 in Liverpool, Eccles, Salford and Manchester, and smaller incidents in Plymouth, Birmingham, Bristol, Cardiff, Swansea, Devonport and Newcastle upon Tyne.
The conditions were in place which enabled the Mosleyites to rebuild their organisation. In the late
1940s there were dozens of small fascist groups, including the British League of Ex-Servicemen and Women, the North West Task Group and the Union of British Freedom. Mosley, the prewar leader of British fascism, published a long programme, The Alternative. Then he brought out a newspaper, the Mosley Newsletter. Next, a network of Mosley book clubs was established to provide a forum to discuss the leader's ideas and with the additional intention of recruiting a new layer of respectable fascists. Meanwhile, Mosley, Jeffrey Hamm, Alexander Raven Thomson and other well known fascists did the rounds of the small groups, encouraging even renegade anti-Mosley fascists to join the new organisation.
By the autumn of 1947, the largest fascist party, Hamm's British League of Ex-Servicemen, was holding weekly public meetings with two to three thousand people regularly people present at the largest rallies. The police recorded 22 British League street meetings in the first half of August 1947 and 30 in the second half. Mosley's supporters claimed to be holding 34 public meetings every week. The most detailed survey estimated that the number of avowed fascists had risen to around six or seven thousand people.
Finally, in November 1947, Mosley staged a meeting, attended by Hamm, the British League, the book clubs, and about 50 organisations all told, where he announced that he would soon form a new political party, the Union Movement.
It was at this stage that anti-fascist groups were set up, in the spirit of the 1930s. The Communist Party and the 43 Group both played a role in isolating the Union Movement from its support. Of course, the organised activity of the anti-fascists is not a complete explanation of the failure of the fascists. There were other factors which contributed to the defeat of the Union Movement.
The Labour government remained popular, while the Conservatives retained the support of the middle classes, and the economic crisis which the fascists hoped for failed to materialise. In particular, the awful legacy of the war forced fascism onto the defensive. Yet at a time when the fascists were already experiencing major difficulties, the intervention of anti-fascists was important. It exposed the weakness of the fascists to their audiences and to themselves.
By the summer of 1948, fascist meetings were in decline. Soon the Union Movement could only attract 250 people even to its largest meetings. Then in spring 1951, Mosley announced that he was leaving Britain for Ireland. Britain was his "Island Prison". Mosley promised never to return.
After Mosley's departure, the Union Movement was reorganised. The party unveiled a new vision of "Europe-A-Nation". Europe would be united under enlightened nationalist (i.e. fascist) control, providing the base for a new white civilisation. Yet Mosley's millennial dreams were tempered with a new realism - the Union Movement recognised that the "final crack-up" would be a long time coming.
No attempt was made to reconstruct the mass fascist party of the 1930s. Instead, the Union Movement emphasised its ideology, stressing the long-term goals of the fascist movement. A magazine, The European, featured articles by Mosley and a generation of Euro-fascists, including Maurice Bardèche from France and Francke Kriesche and Hans Ulrich Rudel from Germany. The fascist party would be built through "permeation", the slow takeover of sports groups, trade unions and local branches of the Tory Party. Robert Saunders rose to a prominent position within the National Farmers' Union, while John Charnley attempted to infiltrate the South-West Lancashire Chamber of Commerce. Yet despite these occasional successes, Mosley's party lacked the drive and the numbers needed for this tactic to work.
Despite the impression of a come-back, Mosley's organisation was ageing and in terminal decline. After 1954, attention focused on the League of Empire Loyalists (LEL), A K Chesterton's rival party, which generated publicity through stunts at Tory Party conferences. Although the LEL had a Colonel Blimp-like character, recruiting ageing Conservatives who dreamed of recreating the British empire, many of its leading members belonged to a different and more violent fascist tradition. For John Tyndall, Martin Webster, Colin Jordan and other LEL members, the League was a step on the road towards a new and purified nazi party, the National Front, which would be formed finally in 1967.
1947 Union Movement launched
|
Leading Mosley loyalist Jeffrey Hamm
|
|
by Dave Renton |