British Union of Fascists
British Union of Fascists | |
---|---|
Membership | Maximum 40,000 (1934 estimate)[6] |
Ideology | British fascism |
Political position | Far-right |
Religion | Protestantism[16] |
Colours | Red White Blue Black (customary) |
Anthem | "Comrades, the Voices"[17][18] |
Party flag | |
Other flags:
| |
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, 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
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 a pro-Nazi "fifth column". A number of prominent BUF members were arrested and interned under Defence Regulation 18B.
History
Background
In 1930, Mosley issued his Mosley Memorandum, which fused
During 1931, the New Party became increasingly influenced by fascism.[21] 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 the basis of policy of the BUF, which was launched on 1 October 1932[21] at 12 Great George Street in London.[22]
Early success and growth
The BUF claimed 50,000 members at one point,
Having lost the funding of newspaper magnate Lord Rothermere, that it had previously enjoyed, at the 1935 general election the party urged voters to abstain, calling for "Fascism Next Time".[32] 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.[citation needed]
Towards the middle of the 1930s, the BUF's violent clashes with opponents began to alienate some
In Belfast in April 1934 an autonomous wing of 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.[34] 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".[35] Its logo combined the fasces with the Red Hand of Ulster.[36]
Decline and legacy
The BUF became more
BUF support for Edward VIII and the peace campaign to prevent a second World War saw membership and public support rise once more.[37] 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 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.[38]
By 1939, total BUF membership had declined to just 20,000.[37] 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 was declared unlawful on 10 July 1940 and ceased its activities.[1][2]
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.
Relationship with the suffragettes
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 the BUF's membership.[39]
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 the women's section of the BUF.
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.[41]
Mosley's electoral strategy had been to prepare for 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 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."[42]
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 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 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.[43]
Prominent members and supporters
This section needs additional citations for verification. (January 2024) |
Despite the short period of its operation the BUF attracted prominent members and supporters. These included:
- Mary Sophia Allen was a suffragette.
- Unionist Member of Parliament for Belfast West.[44] Material in the National Archive shows that Allen acted as an MI5 agent within the BUF.[45][need quotation to verify]
- John Beckett was previously Labour Member of Parliament for Peckham.[46]
- Frank Bossard was an officer in the RAF and, after the war, a Soviet spy.[47][48]
- Patrick Boyle, 8th Earl of Glasgow was a member of the House of Lords.
- Malcolm Campbell was a racing motorist and motoring journalist.[49]
- A. K. Chesterton was a journalist.[50]
- Lady Cynthia Curzon (known as 'Cimmie') was the second daughter of George Curzon, Lord Curzon of Kedleston, and the wife of Oswald Mosley until her death in 1933.
- Norah Elam was a suffragette.
- Robert Forgan was previously Labour Member of Parliament for West Renfrewshire.[49]
- Billy Fullerton was leader of the Billy Boys gang from Glasgow.[52]
- the England cricket team.
- Reginald Goodall was an English conductor.[53]
- Jeffrey Hamm was a prominent member and later Mosley's personal secretary.
- Harold Sidney Harmsworth, 1st Viscount Rothermere, was the owner of the Daily Mail and a member of the House of Lords.[56]
- Neil Francis Hawkins was leader of the Blackshirts.[49]
- Josslyn Hay, 22nd Earl of Erroll, was a member of the House of Lords.[57]
- William Joyce, later nicknamed 'Lord Haw-Haw', became naturalized as a German citizen and broadcast pro-Nazi propaganda from German territory.[49]
- Ted "Kid" Lewis was a Jewish boxing champion; he left the party after it became overtly antisemitic.[58]
- David Freeman-Mitford, 2nd Baron Redesdale, was a member of the House of Lords. His wife, Lady Redesdale, and two of his daughters were also members:
- Diana Mitford(Lady Mosley, after her marriage to Sir Oswald Mosley in 1936)
- Unity Mitford was an associate of Hitler.
- Tommy Moran was a BUF leader in Derby and later south Wales.
- Mary Richardson was a suffragette and head of the BUF's women's section.
- Sir Alliott Verdon Roe was a pilot and businessman.[49]
- Edward Frederick Langley Russell, 2nd Baron Russell of Liverpool, was a member of the House of Lords.[54][55]
- Edward Russell, 26th Baron de Clifford, was a member of the House of Lords.
- Hastings Russell, 12th Duke of Bedford, was a member of the House of Lords.[59]
- Alexander Raven Thomson was the party's Director of Public Policy.[49]
- Theodore Schurch, a Nazi collaborator who became the last person executed in the United Kingdom for a crime other than murder.
- Frank Cyril Tiarks, of German extraction, was a banker, a Director of the Bank of England and a prominent member of the Anglo-German Fellowship.
- His wife, Emmy née Brödermann, was also a member.
- Frederick Toone was the manager of the England cricket team and Yorkshire Cricket Club.
- Henry Williamson was a writer, best known for his 1927 work Tarka the Otter.[60]
In popular culture
- The Channel 4 television serial Mosley (1998) portrayed the career of Oswald Mosley during his years with the BUF. The four-part series was based on the books Rules of the Game and Beyond the Pale, written by his son Nicholas Mosley.[61]
- In the film It Happened Here (1964), the BUF appears to be the ruling party of German-occupied Britain. A Mosley speech is heard on the radio in the scene before everyone goes to the movies.
- The first depiction of Mosley and the BUF in fiction occurred in Aldous Huxley's novel Point Counter Point (1932), in which Mosley is depicted as Everard Webley, the murderous leader of the "BFF", the Brotherhood of Free Fascists; he comes to a nasty end.
- The BUF has been featured in several novels by Harry Turtledove.
- In his alternative history novel In the Presence of Mine Enemies, set in 2010 in a world in which the Nazis were triumphant, the BUF led by Prime Minister Charlie Lynton governs Britain. It is here that the first stirrings of the reform movement appear.
- In the that reality's analogue of the First World War, the "Silver Shirts" (analogous to the BUF) entered into a coalition with the Conservatives who were led by Churchill with Mosley being appointed Chancellor of the Exchequer.
- The BUF and Mosley also appear as background influences in Turtledove's Worldwartetralogy and is set in the 1960s.
- In his
- biological weaponis released during the Second World War. The history of the BUF and Mosley is recapitulated.
- In Ken Follett's novel Night Over Water, several of the main characters are BUF members. In his book Winter of the World, the Battle of Cable Street plays a role and some of the characters are involved in either the BUF or the anti-BUF organisations.
- The BUF also appears in Guy Walters' book The Leader (2003), in which Mosley is the dictator of Britain in the 1930s.
- The British humorous writer P. G. Wodehouse satirized the BUF in books and short stories. The BUF was satirized as "The Black Shorts",[62] rather than "shirts", because all of the best shirt colours were already taken. Its leader was Roderick Spode, the owner of a ladies' underwear shop.
- The British novelist Diana Mitford, the author's sister, had been romantically involved with Mosley since 1932.
- In the 1992 Acorn Media production of Agatha Christie's One, Two, Buckle My Shoe with David Suchet and Philip Jackson, one of the supporting characters (played by Christopher Eccleston) secures a paid position as a rank-and-file member of the BUF.
- The BUF and Oswald Mosley are alluded to in Kazuo Ishiguro's novel The Remains of the Day.
- The BUF and Mosley are shown in the BBC version of Upstairs, Downstairs(2010) in which two of the characters are BUF supporters.
- The Pogues' song "The Sick Bed of Cuchulainn", from their album Rum Sodomy & the Lash(1985), refers to the BUF in its second verse with the line "And you decked some fucking blackshirt who was cursing all the Yids".
- Ned Beauman's first novel, Boxer, Beetle (2010), portrays the Battle of Cable Street.
- C. J. Samson's novel Dominion (2012) has Sir Oswald Mosley as Lord Beaverbrookis Prime Minister of an authoritarian coalition government. Blackshirts tend to be auxiliary policemen.
- In the film King Edward VIII. Edward was suspected of fascist leanings.[63]
- Sarah Phelps used the British Union of Fascists' insignia as a theme in her 2018 BBC One adaptation of Agatha Christie's The A.B.C. Murders.[64]
- Amanda K. Hale's novel Mad Hatter (2019) features her father James Larratt Battersby as a member of the BUF.
- Mosley was portrayed by Sam Claflin in Series 5 and 6 of the BBC show Peaky Blinders as the founder of the BUF.[65]
- The legacy of BUF is a theme of the final episode of season 8 of the detective series Father Brown.
Election results
By-election | Candidate | Votes | % share |
---|---|---|---|
1940 Silvertown by-election | Tommy Moran | 151 | 1.0 |
1940 Leeds North East by-election | Sydney Allen | 722 | 2.9 |
1940 Middleton and Prestwich by-election | Frederick Haslam | 418 | 1.3 |
See also
- List of British fascist parties
- Mosley (1997)
- The flash and circle symbol
- Battle of South Street – an incident between BUF members and anti-fascists in Worthing on 9 October 1934
- Canadian Union of Fascists - affiliated Canadian party
References
- ^ a b Martin Ceadel (2000). Semi-detached Idealists: The British Peace Movement and International Relations, 1854-1945. Oxford. p. 404.
{{cite book}}
: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link) - ^ ISBN 9781443891608.
- ^ Lewis, David Stephen (1987). Illusions of Grandeur: Mosley, Fascism, and British Society, 1931-81. Manchester / Wolfeboro, NH: Manchester University Press. p. 68.
- ^ Stephen Dorril, Blackshirt (2006), p.258.
- ^ Martin Pugh, Hurrah For The Blackshirts!: Fascists and Fascism in Britain Between the Wars, pp. 133-135, Random House
- S2CID 159618633.
- ^ a b David Stephen Lewis. Illusions of Grandeur: Mosley, Fascism, and British Society, 1931-81. P. 51.
- ^ Oswald Mosley. Fascism: 100 Questions Asked and Answered. Question 1
- ^ Oswald Mosley. Fascism: 100 Questions Asked and Answered. Question 1
- ISBN 9781899435265.
- ^ Oswald Mosley. Fascism: 100 Questions Asked and Answered. 10 points of Fascism: V. The Corporate State
- ^ Roger Griffin. Fascism, Totalitarianism And Political Religion. Oxon, England, UK; New York, New York, USA: Routledge, 2005. P. 110.
- ^ Oswald Mosley. Fascism: 100 Questions Asked and Answered. Question 88
- ^ W F Mandle, Anti-Semitism and the British Union of Fascists
Robert Benewick The Fascist Movement in Britain, pp 132-134
Alan S Millward, "Fascism and the Economy", in Walter Laqueur (ed.), Fascism: A reader's Guide, p 450
Nigel Copsey, Anti-Fascism in Britain, p. 38 and pp. 40-41 - ^ Richard Thurlow. Fascism in Britain: A History, 1918-1945. Revised paperback edition. I. B. Taurus & Co. Ltd., 2006. Pp. 28.
- ^ David Stephen Lewis. Illusions of Grandeur: Mosley, Fascism, and British Society, 1931-81. P. 51.
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- ^ Andrzej Olechnowicz (Winter 2004). "Liberal Anti-Fascism in the 1930s: The Case of Sir Ernest Barker". Albion: A Quarterly Journal Concerned with British Studies. 36 (4): 643.
- ^ "The Voice of the Turtle". 20 December 2002. Archived from the original on 20 December 2002.
- ^ R. Benewick, Political Violence and Public Order, London: Allen Lane, 1969, pp. 279-282
- ^ Bartlett, Roger Comrade Newsletter of the Friends of Oswald Mosley, When Mosley Men Won Elections (November 2014)
- ^ Blackshirts on-Sea: A Pictorial History of the Mosley Summer Camps 1933-1939 J. A. Booker (Brockingday Publications 1999)
- ^ Storm Tide - Worthing: Prelude to War 1933-1939 Michael Payne (Verite CM Ltd 2008)
- ^ "The notorious Charles Bentinck Budd and the British Union of Fascists". Shoreham Herald. Archived from the original on 31 January 2017.
- ^ "When Mosley Men Won Elections", Comrade (newsletter of the Friends of Oswald Mosley), November 2014
- ^ "BOOK REVIEW the Man Who Might Have Been". Jewish Socialists' Group. Archived from the original on 26 September 2015.
- ^ 1932-1938 Fascism rises—March of the Blackshirts Archived 3 October 2008 at the Wayback Machine
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- ^ Joe Joyce (17 July 2012). "July 17th, 1934". The Irish Times.
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- ^ a b Richard C. Thurlow. Fascism in Britain: from Oswald Mosley's Blackshirts to the National Front. 2nd edition. New York, New York, USA: I.B. Tauris & Co. Ltd., 2006. p. 94.
- ^ Fenton, Ben (20 March 2006). "Oswald Mosley 'was a financial crook bankrolled by Nazis'". Daily Telegraph. Archived from the original on 12 January 2022. Retrieved 16 July 2014.
- ISBN 9781904341093, p. 86: "Eventually women, under the titular leadership of ‘Ma Mosley’ – Lady Maud, ably seconded by an ex-suffragette, Mary Richardson – constituted one-quarter of the BUF's membership, and Mosley himself later acknowledged the part they played: "My movement has been largely built up by the fanaticism of women: they hold ideas with tremendous passion. Without the women I could not have got one-quarter of the way."
- ISBN 978-1911522393.
- ^ "BBC Radio 4 - Mother Was A Blackshirt". Bbc.co.uk. BBC. 4 January 2010. Retrieved 21 April 2013.
- ISBN 978-1-4466-9967-6. Archived from the originalon 13 January 2012.
- ^ Martin Pugh, "Why the Former Suffragettes Flocked to British Fascism", Slate, 14 April 2017. Retrieved 24 March 2019.
- ^ Arthur Green, "Allen, William Edward David (1901–1973)", Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004; online ed., January 2008 (Accessed 5 February 2014)
- ^ The National Archive (1942), KV 3/35 14. British Union evidence of support from Italy.
- ^ Linehan, Thomas. British Fascism, 1918–39: Parties, Ideology and Culture. p. 139.
while Beckett was a one-time Labour MP for Gateshead (1924–29) and Peckham (1929–31)
- ^ "Soviet spy who had his eye on Belfast", Belfast Telegraph, 24 May 2003
- ^ Eric Waugh, With Wings as Eagles
- ^ a b c d e f g Julie V. Gottlieb, "British Union of Fascists (act. 1932–1940)", Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004; online edn, Jan 2008 (Accessed 5 February 2014)
- ^ David Renton, "Bennett, Donald Clifford Tyndall (1910–1986)", Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004; online edn, Jan 2008 (Accessed 5 February 2014)
- ^ Brian Holden Reid, "Fuller, John Frederick Charles (1878–1966)", Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004; online edn, Jan 2008 (Accessed 5 February 2014)
- ^ "'Billy Boys' link to the Ku Klux Klan", The Irish News, 6 November 2015
- ^ John Tooley, "Goodall, Sir Reginald (1901–1990)", Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004; online ed., January 2008 (Accessed 5 February 2014)
- ^ a b c Resistance to fascism, Glasgow Digital Library (Accessed 6 February 2014)
- ^ a b c Richard Griffiths, Fellow Travellers of the Right: British Enthusiasts for Nazi Germany. London: Constable, 1980. p.52 The names are from MI5 Report. 1 August 1934. PRO HO 144/20144/110. (Cited in Thomas Norman Keeley Blackshirts Torn: inside the British Union of Fascists, 1932- 1940 p.26) (Accessed 6 February 2014)
- ^ D. George Boyce, "Harmsworth, Harold Sidney, first Viscount Rothermere (1868–1940)", Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004; online edn, Jan 2008 (Accessed 5 February 2014)
- ^ Richard Davenport-Hines, "Hay, Josslyn Victor, twenty-second earl of Erroll (1901–1941)", Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004; online ed., January 2008 (Accessed 5 February 2014)
- ^ Charlie Pottins (Spring 2007). "BOOK REVIEW The Man Who Might Have Been". Jewish Socialist.
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- ^ BFI Film & TV Database (2012). "Mosley". British Film Institute. Archived from the original on 12 October 2009. Retrieved 8 November 2012.
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- ^ Ziegler, King Edward VIII: The official biography, p. 392
- ^ Sarah Phelps (20 December 2018). "The ABC Murders". BBC Writers' Room. Retrieved 24 January 2019.
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Further reading
- Caldicott, Rosemary (2017) Lady Blackshirts. The perils of Perception - Suffragettes who became Fascists, Bristol Radical Pamphletteer #39. ISBN 978-1911522393
- Cross, Colin (1963). The Fascists in Britain. St. Martin's Press.
- Dorril, Stephen (2006). Blackshirt: Sir Oswald Mosley and British fascism. London: Viking. ISBN 978-0670869992.
- Drabik, Jakub. (2016a) "British Union of Fascists", Contemporary British History 30.1 (2016): 1–19.
- Drábik, Jakub. (2016b) "Spreading the faith: the propaganda of the British Union of Fascists", Journal of Contemporary European Studies (2016): 1-15.
- Garau, Salvatore. "The Internationalisation of Italian Fascism in the face of German National Socialism, and its Impact on the British Union of Fascists", Politics, Religion & Ideology 15.1 (2014): 45–63.
- ISBN 978-0192851161.
- ISBN 9781844130870.
- Thurlow, Richard (2006). Fascism in Britain: From Oswald Mosley's Blackshirts to the National Front (rev. ed.). London: Tauris. ISBN 978-1860643378.