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The British Aristocracy Torn Between the House of Lords and the Mosley Movement KARINA URBACH Age of No Extremes? The British Aristocracy Torn between the House of Lords and the Mosley Movement in KARINA URBACH (ed.), European Aristocracies and the Radical Right 1918-1939 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007) pp. 53–71 ISBN: 978 0 199 23173 7 The following PDF is published under a Creative Commons CC BY-NC-ND licence. Anyone may freely read, download, distribute, and make the work available to the public in printed or electronic form provided that appropriate credit is given. However, no commercial use is allowed and the work may not be altered or transformed, or serve as the basis for a derivative work. The publication rights for this volume have formally reverted from Oxford University Press to the German Historical Institute London. All reasonable effort has been made to contact any further copyright holders in this volume. Any objections to this material being published online under open access should be addressed to the German Historical Institute London. DOI: 4 Age of No Extremes? The British Aristocracy Torn between the House of Lords and the Mosley Movement KARINA URBACH At the height of the Nuremberg trials the British ambassador to Washington, Lord Halifax, wrote to the Duchess of Portland: 'My dearest Ivy, I am amused with you saying that some of the peers are apprehensive of being summoned to give evidence at Nuremberg.'' At a time when his fellow aristocrats were still living in fear, Halifax had already received a summons: 'Goering has requested me and Alex Cadogan to go and testify to how earnest a seeker of the peace he was up to the war.'2 Of course Halifax, the foreign secretary closely associated with appease- ment, was used to being showered by invitations from Nazis;3 yet why did other peers seriously fear that they might also be summoned to a war crimes tribunal? To this day it is difficult to estimate the number of British nobles with leanings to the radical right. This is mainly because access to private archives is restricted. But even when such access is granted private collections often turn out to have been 1 Lord Halifax to Ivy, 7th Duchess of Portland, 2 Dec. 1945, Welbeck Private Archives. I would like to thank Lady Anne Bentinck and Welbeck's Curator, Derek Adlam, for giving me access to the papers of the 6th and 7th Dukes of Portland (uncatalogued). 2 In the end Halifax was saved such public embarrassment. Sir Alexander Cadogan (1884-1968) had been permanent under-secretary since 1938. His father, the 5th Earl of Cadogan, brought up his seven sons in aristocratic grandeur. Alexander later attended Eton and Balliol College, Oxford. See David Dilks (ed.), The Diaries ef Sir Akxander Cadogan 1938--45 (London, 1971). 3 The Nazis courted Halifax relentlessly, via the embassy in London and, of course, during his visits to Berlin. See from 1935 onwards the papers of the German ambassador von Roesch. Nachlass Dr Leopold von Roesch, 1881-1936, Personalien Staatsmanner, Pol. II R 77121, Politisches Archiv des Auswartigen Amtes Berlin and the papers of the Dienststelle Ribbentrop, Pol. 2 R 102792. 54 KARINA URBACH sanitized. Descendants have understandably developed a selec- tive memory-connections with authoritarian regimes or radical right-wing groups were not seen as laudable after 1945 and were thereafter erased from the family archives. Even in cases of well- known British Nazi supporters such as Viscount Lymington (later gth Earl of Portsmouth), whose papers are deposited in a public archive, letters from his German, Austrian, and Italian friends are missing. 4 Nor are works of reference illuminating. Burke's Peerage, which lists affiliations, does not mention, under the entry for the Marquis of Graham ~ater 7th Duke of Montrose) and his brother Lord Ronald, the affiliation: 'member of the Right Club'. However, they had been ardent supporters of various fascist groups and eagerly contacted the German embassy to arrange an 'educational' trip to Berlin: 'We would also like to see if possible a Labour Service Camp and a Concentration Camp-in fact anything which might help to throw a true light on the situation as opposed to what we read in the Press.'5 This bizarre enquiry was not unusual. Files of the German foreign ministry are full of applications from members of the British upper class to meet Hitler. The infamous 'Gestapo Miiller' was busy checking their pedigrees to make sure that the Fuhrer would not be embar- rassed-after all, some members of the British nobility seemed to haveJewish blood.6 In general, British aristocrats have been perceived as setting an example for their European cousins, who were not as charis- matic, urban, wealthy, or adaptable to the modem world. This image extended to the twentieth century, when the British aris- tocracy was considered to have been politically reliable-a Horthy regime or Prussian camarilla would never have been 4 Lymington himself gave a bowdlerized version of his activities in the 1930s and 1940s: Earl of Portsmouth, A Knot I/[ Roots (London, 1965). However, the German foreign ministry has kept his enthusiastic letters which started in 1933. Politisches Archiv des Auswartiges Amtes, Berlin. Nachlass Dr Leopold von Roesch, 1881-1936, no. 14 Privatdienstschreiben Auswartiges Arnt 1932-4. 5 Their 'impeccable' credentials included a letter of introduction from Hitler's court jester, Putzi Hanfstaengel. Lord Ronald Graliam to Attach{: H. Fritz Randolph, 2 Nov. 1934, Archiv des Auswlirtigen Amts Berlin, Politische und kulturelle Propaganda in England Pol. 26, R 77171. The address of Graliam's letter, 28 Sumner Place, Onslow Square, SW7, is interesting. Onslow Square is only a few hundred yards from 83 Onslow Gardens, which is where WilliamJoyce lived by 1937. At the time South Kensington was a semi-run-down area and Onslow Square seemed to attract budding fascists. 6 24 Feb. 1937, Archiv des Auswlirtigen Amts Berlin, Pol. 36 R 102827 Judenfrage. The British Aristocracy 55 possible in England. Aristocrats who are known to have supported radical right-wing groups have often been portrayed as eccentric figures, or marginalized as disgruntled, 'declining landowners'.7 A recent panegyric for the aristocracy came to the conclusion that 'Class war, socialism, fascism were un-English ideas, only suitable, if suitable at all, for foreign countries.' This was because of the British aristocracy, which 'for three centuries guaranteed the rights and liberties of all the British people so effectively as to make a written constitution unnecessary'. 8 So, all is well on the Western Front of the European aristocra- cies? In Kazuo lshiguro's Remains ofthe Dqy, fictional Nazi sympa- thizer Lord Darlington is in close contact with Oswald Mosley and dabbles in appeasement. He is suspicious of democracy: 'The world's far too complicated a place now for endless members of parliament debating things to a standstill . Germany and Italy have set their houses in order by acting. '9 The character of Darlington could have been based on various contemporary aristocrats who were disillusioned with democ- racy: the Marquis ofTavistock, a Nazi sympathizer who wanted to strike a peace deal with Hitler, or Lord Londonderry, former secretary of state for air, who defended Nazi Germany and not just for political purposes. 10 But, to put it in literary terms, is Ishiguro's Lord Darlington as representative of the twentieth century as Anthony Trollope's Duke of Omnium was for the nineteenth? 11 The contemporary left would have answered in the affirmative. They suspected an aristocratic conspiracy: Mosley has 'wealthy, aristocratic, influential friends; men who have powerful control- ling influence in industry; in parliament, and in particular the 7 Cannadine thinks that they were mainly 'declasse and marginal aristocrats'. David Cannadine, The Decline and Fall ef the British Aristocr(l{)' (London, 1992), 547. 8 Peregrine Worsthome, In Defence ef Aristocr(l{)' (London, 2004), 27-8. 9 Kazuo Ishiguro, Remains ef the DO:)! (London, 1989), 155 ff. 10 Londonderry wanted Britain to rearm or strike a deal with Germany. His and Lady Londonderry's autobiographies reveal that they also felt a true affinity with the Nazi regime. Marchioness of Londonderry, Retrospect (London, 1938) and Marquess of Londonderry, Oursewes and Germany (London, 1938). See also N. C. Fleming, The Marquess ef Londonderry: Aristocrary, Power and Politics in Britain and Ireland (London, 2005) and Ian Kershaw, Making Friends with Hider: Lord Londonderry and Britain's Road to War (London, 2004). 11 It is possible that lshiguro simply meant this as a literary joke, but the difference between the real Whig politician Bedford of the nineteenth century and his radicalized relative in the twentieth century could not be greater. For Tavistock, see the autobiogra- phy by his son, Duke of Bedford, A Siwer Plated Spoon (London, 1959). 56 KARINA URBACH Tory party machine. Mosley is a millionaire and has wide family ties with sections of the ruling circles . The fact that these fami- lies were personally friendly with Hitler arose from their common bond of hatred of the working class.' 12 The Earl of Kinnoull supported this line of argument when in 1934, during a House of Lords debate on the British Union of Fascists, he accused fellow peers of supporting and financing fascist movements in Britain. 13 Today we know that upper-class support for Mosley was short- lived. 14 We are also aware of the political, economic, and mili- tary reasons for appeasing Hitler; and this essay will not repeat the extensive research that has been done on the subject. Yet 'there was a body of conservative opinion which took a serious interest in Fascism, both for its qualities of leadership and for its corporatist theories'. 15 In the 1920s and 1930s this body was in constant flux, its make-up and doctrines changed quickly, and one has to distinguish between many shades of grey.
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