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46-696: After the IFL turned down a merger with the British Union of Fascists in 1932, due to policy differences, the BUF mounted a campaign against the IFL, physically breaking up its meetings and fabricating phony plans that showed the IFL planning to attack the BUF's headquarters, which were passed on to the British government. The Imperial Fascist League went into a steep decline upon the outbreak of World War II , after Leese declared his allegiance to "King and country", to

92-423: A UK version of their movement. The main force behind this new group was Unionist MP Archibald Maule Ramsay who chaired the group's 14-man leadership council. The group's constitution described it as an "association of race conscious Britons" and sought to co-ordinate all far-right and fascist movements whilst giving particular emphasis to anti-Semitism . The League sought to unite leading figures from across

138-454: A few councillors at local government level during the 1930s (including Charles Bentinck Budd ( Worthing , Sussex ), 1934; Ronald Creasy ( Eye, Suffolk ), 1938) but did not win any parliamentary seats. Two former members of the BUF, Major Sir Jocelyn Lucas and Harold Soref , were later elected as Conservative Members of Parliament (MPs). Having lost the funding of newspaper magnate Lord Rothermere , that it had previously enjoyed, at

184-589: A large repair bill onto the IFL. The BUF even passed fabricated evidence of an IFL plot to attack its headquarters to the Home Office . By 1939, with the IFL's influence diminished, the rivalry had cooled to the point that the BUF bookshop in Canterbury was prepared to stock IFL pamphlets. Although rejecting a merger with the BUF, the IFL was linked to the Nordic League through Commander E. H. Cole,

230-527: A particularly strong effect on the BUF whose supporters were known as "Blackshirts" after the uniforms they wore. Growing British hostility towards Nazi Germany , with which the British press persistently associated the BUF, further contributed to the decline of the movement's membership. The party was finally banned by the British government on 23 May 1940 after the start of the Second World War, amid suspicion that its remaining supporters might form

276-701: A pro-Nazi " fifth column ". A number of prominent BUF members were arrested and interned under Defence Regulation 18B . Oswald Mosley was the youngest elected Conservative MP before crossing the floor in 1922, joining first Labour and, shortly afterward, the Independent Labour Party . He became Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster in Ramsay MacDonald 's Labour government , advising on rising unemployment. In 1930, Mosley issued his Mosley Memorandum, which fused protectionism with

322-606: A proto- Keynesian programme of policies designed to tackle the problem of unemployment, and he resigned from the Labour Party soon after, in early 1931, when the plans were rejected. He immediately formed the New Party , with policies based on his memorandum. The party won 16% of the vote at a by-election in Ashton-under-Lyne in early 1931; however, it failed to achieve any other electoral success. During 1931,

368-681: A staunch advocate of the Russian Czarist hoax The Protocols of the Elders of Zion , who served as chancellor of the League as well as being a leading IFL member. Before long, both Leese and P. J. Ridout also became members of the group, membership of which encompassed most shades of far-right activity. The outbreak of the Second World War caused the small group to fall apart, as Leese declared loyalty to King and country and renamed

414-481: A traitor and condemned him for his extreme antisemitism. The historian Stephen Dorril revealed in his book Blackshirts that secret envoys from the Nazis had donated about £50,000 to the BUF. By 1939, total BUF membership had declined to just 20,000. On 23 May 1940, Mosley and some 740 other party members were interned under Defence Regulation 18B . The BUF then called on its followers to resist invasion, but it

460-530: The Daily Mail to withdraw its support for the movement. The level of violence shown at the rally shocked many, with the effect of turning neutral parties against the BUF and contributing to anti-fascist support. One observer claimed: "I came to the conclusion that Mosley was a political maniac, and that all decent English people must combine to kill his movement." In Belfast in April 1934 an autonomous wing of

506-498: The Red Hand of Ulster . The BUF became more antisemitic over 1934–35 owing to the growing influence of Nazi sympathisers within the party, such as William Joyce and John Beckett , which provoked the resignation of members such as Robert Forgan . This antisemitic emphasis and these high-profile resignations resulted in a significant decline in membership, dropping to below 8,000 by the end of 1935, and, ultimately, Mosley shifted

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552-644: The 'Racial Fascist Corporate State', stressed the supremacy of the ' Aryan race '. The IFL altered its flag so that it featured the Union Flag superimposed with the swastika . As a result of that conversion, the IFL enjoyed a higher profile than its membership might suggest, in large part due to the funding that it received from Nazi Germany paid through the English correspondent for the Völkischer Beobachter , Dr. Hans Wilhelm Thost . Indeed, by

598-603: The 1935 general election the party urged voters to abstain, calling for "Fascism Next Time". There never was a "next time" as the next general election was not held until July 1945, five years after the dissolution of the BUF. Towards the middle of the 1930s, the BUF's violent clashes with opponents began to alienate some middle-class supporters, and membership decreased. At the Olympia rally in London, in 1934, BUF stewards violently ejected anti-fascist disrupters, and this led

644-540: The BUF's economic policies would offer them true equality – unlike its continental counterparts, the movement insisted it would not require women to return to domesticity and that the corporatist state would ensure adequate representation for housewives, while it would also guarantee equal wages for women and remove the marriage bar that restricted the employment of married women. The BUF also offered support for new mothers (due to concerns of falling birth rates), while also offering effective birth control, as Mosley believed it

690-440: The BUF's membership. In a January 2010 BBC documentary, Mother Was A Blackshirt , James Maw reported that in 1914 Norah Elam was placed in a Holloway Prison cell with Emmeline Pankhurst for her involvement with the suffragette movement, and, in 1940, she was returned to the same prison with Diana Mosley , this time for her involvement with the fascist movement. Another leading suffragette, Mary Richardson , became head of

736-639: The Duke of Wellington , the Duchess of Hamilton , Baron Brocket , and Michael O'Dwyer became involved in their movement. The NL came under increasing scrutiny after Kristallnacht , particularly for the violence of Ramsay, William Joyce and A. K. Chesterton in their anti-Semitic speeches. Others such as Elwin Wright, who until 1937 was secretary of the Anglo-German Fellowship , called for

782-440: The IFL and its organ The Fascist . The Fascists Legions, a blackshirted paramilitary arm, was soon added under the command of Leslie H. Sherrard. The group initially advocated such policies as corporatism , monetary reform and the removal of citizenship from Jews . It had no more than 500 members and may have had as few as 150. The group was initially led by Brigadier-General Erskine Tulloch although real power lay with Leese, who

828-422: The IFL. Notes Bibliography British Union of Fascists This is an accepted version of this page The British Union of Fascists ( BUF ) was a British fascist political party formed in 1932 by Oswald Mosley . Mosley changed its name to the British Union of Fascists and National Socialists in 1936 and, in 1937, to the British Union . In 1939, following the start of the Second World War ,

874-545: The NL largely went into abeyance, with members joining other, more public, anti-war groups. The League had officially disbanded as soon as war was declared although it continued to meet secretly at Gilbert's house until his arrest in late September 1939. Two of its members, Joyce and Margaret Bothamley, left Britain for Nazi Germany after the outbreak of war. Given the association of the NL with Nazism, BUF organiser Alexander Raven Thomson even suggested that Mosley publicly denounce

920-512: The New Party became increasingly influenced by fascism . The following year, after a January 1932 visit to Benito Mussolini in Italy , Mosley's own conversion to fascism was confirmed. He wound up the New Party in April, but preserved its youth movement, which would form the core of the BUF, intact. He spent the summer that year writing a fascist programme, The Greater Britain , and this formed

966-582: The basis of policy of the BUF, which was launched on 1 October 1932 at 12 Great George Street in London. The BUF claimed 50,000 members at one point, and the Daily Mail , running the headline "Hurrah for the Blackshirts!", was an early supporter. The first Director of Propaganda, appointed in February 1933, was Wilfred Risdon , who was responsible for organising all of Mosley's public meetings. Despite strong resistance from anti-fascists, including

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1012-601: The displeasure of pro-German members. Nevertheless, Leese was interned under wartime security regulations, and the IFL was not reformed after the war. Leese had originally been a member of the British Fascists and indeed had been one of only two members ever to hold elected office for them (as a councillor in Stamford ). However, he split from the BF around 1927 and decamped to London , where in 1929, he established both

1058-457: The election after 1935, and in 1936 he announced a list of BUF candidates for that election, with Elam nominated to stand for Northampton. Mosley accompanied Elam to Northampton to introduce her to her electorate at a meeting in the Town Hall. At that meeting Mosley announced that "he was glad indeed to have the opportunity of introducing the first candidate, and ... [thereby] killed for all time

1104-538: The far right, as demonstrated in April 1939 when a meeting addressed by Ramsay was chaired by a member of the British Union of Fascists who was supported by former British Fascists president R. B. D. Blakeney and Imperial Fascist League member E. H. Cole. Other leading members included J. F. C. Fuller , the United Empire Fascist Party leader and Nazi agent Serocold Skeels, Henry Hamilton Beamish , Arnold Leese and P. J. Ridout. The latter

1150-584: The group the Angles Circle but that stance was rejected by some pro-German members such as Tony Gittens, Harold Lockwood and Bertie Mills. The matter proved to be academic, however, as in 1940, Leese was interned under Defence Regulation 18B . In 1946, Leese and six others were arrested for aiding two escaped Dutch prisoners of war who had been members of the Waffen-SS and were planning to flee to Argentina . One of those arrested, Anthony William Gittens,

1196-420: The latter's initial reluctance to make anti-Semitism a central theme, leading to Leese dismissing Mosley as a "kosher fascist". He even dubbed the BUF the "British Jewnion of Fascists" over the issue. One of their biggest differences was that the IFL held a biological view of anti-Semitism, the belief that Jews were inherently inferior as a race , in contrast to the BUF, whose eventual adoption of anti-Semitism

1242-738: The local Jewish community , the Labour Party , the Independent Labour Party and the Communist Party of Great Britain , the BUF found a following in the East End of London , where in the London County Council elections of March 1937, it obtained reasonably successful results in Bethnal Green , Shoreditch and Limehouse , polling almost 8,000 votes, although none of its candidates was elected. The BUF did elect

1288-546: The mid-1930s the IFL had turned against the Italian model so much that it denounced Benito Mussolini as a "pro-Semite" and claimed that the Second Italo-Ethiopian War had been organised by Jews. In 1932, Robert Forgan approached the IFL and suggested that it should merge into Oswald Mosley 's British Union of Fascists , but the offer was declined. Leese rejected any overtures from Mosley because of

1334-643: The party became increasingly radical, however, support declined. The Olympia Rally of 1934, in which a number of anti-fascist protestors were attacked by the paramilitary wing of the BUF, the Fascist Defence Force , isolated the party from much of its following. The party's embrace of Nazi -style antisemitism in 1936 led to increasingly violent confrontations with anti-fascists, notably the 1936 Battle of Cable Street in London's East End . The Public Order Act 1936 , which banned political uniforms and responded to increasing political violence, had

1380-656: The party in Northern Ireland called the "Ulster Fascists" was founded. The branch was a failure and became virtually extinct after less than a year in existence. It had ties with the Blueshirts in the Irish Free State and voiced support for a United Ireland , describing the partition of Ireland as "an insurmountable barrier to peace, and prosperity in Ireland". Its logo combined the fasces with

1426-423: The party was proscribed by the British government and in 1940 it was disbanded. The BUF emerged in 1932 from the electoral defeat of its antecedent, the New Party , in the 1931 general election . The BUF's foundation was initially met with popular support, and it attracted a sizeable following, with the party claiming 50,000 members at one point. The press baron Lord Rothermere was a notable early supporter. As

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1472-619: The party's focus back to mainstream politics. There were frequent and continuous violent clashes between BUF party members and anti-fascist protesters, most famously at the Battle of Cable Street in October 1936, when organised anti-fascists prevented the BUF from marching through Cable Street. However, the party later staged other marches through the East End without incident, albeit not on Cable Street itself. BUF support for Edward VIII and

1518-649: The peace campaign to prevent a second World War saw membership and public support rise once more. The government was sufficiently concerned by the party's growing prominence to pass the Public Order Act 1936 , which banned political uniforms and required police consent for political marches. In 1937, William Joyce and other Nazi sympathisers split from the party to form the National Socialist League , which quickly folded, with most of its members interned . Mosley later denounced Joyce as

1564-454: The position of German womanhood". The BBC report described how Elam's fascist philosophy grew from her suffragette experiences, how the British fascist movement became largely driven by women, how they targeted young women from an early age, how the first British fascist movement was founded by a woman, and how the leading lights of the suffragettes had, with Oswald Mosley , founded the BUF. Mosley's electoral strategy had been to prepare for

1610-656: The same building as their headquarters. Another group, the Militant Christian Patriots , that was active after the Munich Crisis urging Neville Chamberlain not to become involved in a " Jewish war", was also closely connected to the NL and said by MI5 to be a front organisation. By using this group and another front organisation, the Liberty Restoration League, the NL was able to ensure that high-ranking figures such as

1656-486: The shooting of Jews, whilst Commander E. H. Cole condemned the House of Commons as being full of "bastardised Jewish swine". However, such extremist language worked against the NL because its speakers were seen by the public at large as quite mad and so their pro- appeasement arguments were ignored. Following the outbreak of the Second World War , two leading members, T. Victor-Rowe and Oliver Gilbert, were interned , and

1702-461: The suggestion that National Socialism proposed putting British women back into the home; this is simply not true. Mrs Elam [he went on] had fought in the past for women's suffrage ... and was a great example of the emancipation of women in Britain." Former suffragettes were drawn to the BUF for a variety of reasons. Many felt the movement's energy reminded them of the suffragettes, while others felt

1748-726: The women's section of the BUF. Mary Sophia Allen OBE was a former branch leader of the West of England Women's Social and Political Union (WSPU). At the outbreak of the First World War, she joined the Women Police Volunteers , becoming the WPV Commandant in 1920. She met Mosley at the January Club in April 1932, going on to speak at the club following her visit to Germany, "to learn the truth about of

1794-476: Was a far-right organisation in the United Kingdom from 1935 to 1939 that sought to serve as a co-ordinating body for the various extremist movements whilst also seeking to promote Nazism . The League was a private organisation that did not organise any public events. The Nordic League (NL) originated in 1935 when agents of Alfred Rosenberg 's Nordische Gesellschaft arrived in Britain to establish

1840-671: Was able to absorb the National Socialist Workers Party, a small group led by NL member Lieutenant-Colonel Graham Seton-Hutchison . The NL was closely linked to the White Knights of Britain , a secret society otherwise known as the Hooded Men with ritual initiation based on Freemasonry and compared to the Ku Klux Klan that was active from 1935 to 1937. The White Knights and the NL shared

1886-601: Was also a former IFL member, and would join the National Front in the 1960s. All seven men were convicted and each sentenced to one year in prison for their roles in the attempted escape. Leese was released from prison in November 1947. Although Leese continued to be politically active after the war, the IFL was not reformed. His formation of the National Workers Movement in 1948 meant the end for

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1932-561: Was confirmed as Director-General in 1932. Henry Hamilton Beamish , the head of The Britons , served as vice-president of the IFL and was a regular speaker at the movement's events. The IFL soon shifted away from Italian fascism (it originally used the fasces as its emblem) after Leese had met the Nazi Party propagandist Julius Streicher in Germany . Soon, anti-Semitism became the central theme of IFL policy and its new programme,

1978-403: Was credited with helping to popularise the NL's slogan "Perish Judah", which was frequently rendered "P.J." in public. BUF leader Oswald Mosley , fearful of being too closely associated with the League's extremist rhetoric, did not join but he permitted party members to do so which the likes of Fuller, Robert Gordon-Canning and Oliver C. Gilbert did readily. As a result of these links the BUF

2024-545: Was declared unlawful on 10 July 1940 and ceased its activities. After the war, Mosley made several unsuccessful attempts to return to political life, one such being through the Union Movement , but he had no successes. Attracted by "modern" fascist policies, such as ending the widespread practice of sacking women from their jobs on marriage, many women joined the Blackshirts – particularly in economically depressed Lancashire. Eventually women constituted one-quarter of

2070-546: Was framed in ideas about the Jews' supposed undue influence at the top echelons of society. By 1933, the BUF decided to act against the renegade IFL, with Blackshirts attacking a number of meetings. The campaign culminated in an incident in Great Portland Street in which 50 Blackshirts disguised as communists invaded the stage to attack Leese before they caused considerable damage to the hall in an attempt to force

2116-433: Was not in the national interest to have a populace ignorant of modern scientific knowledge. While these policies were motivated more out of making the best use of women's skills in state interest than any kind of feminism , it was still a draw for many suffragettes. Despite the short period of its operation the BUF attracted prominent members and supporters. These included: Nordic League The Nordic League ( NL )

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