A.K. Chesterton and the Problem of British Fascism, 1915-1973
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A.K. CHESTERTON AND THE PROBLEM OF BRITISH FASCISM, 1915-1973. Luke LeCras Bachelor of Arts in History with Honours. THESIS PRESENTED FOR THE DEGREE OF DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY IN HISTORY MURDOCH UNIVERSITY, AUGUST 2017 THESIS DECLARATION I declare that this thesis is my own account of my research and contains as its main content work which has not previously been submitted for a degree at any tertiary education institution. .................................... Luke LeCras i ABSTRACT Fascist and extreme right-wing political movements in Britain have been the subject of enduring interest to historians since 1945, with the majority of works centring on the British Union of Fascists (BUF), a political party founded and led by Sir Oswald Mosley between 1932 and 1940. Despite the BUF’s failure to achieve levels of support on par with many fascist movements in continental Europe, there is now a sizeable body of historiography dealing with the party as a minor case within the study of European fascism and as a unique phenomenon of radical politics in interwar Britain. By comparison, little interest has been devoted to aspects of British fascism not connected to Mosley or the BUF. Moreover, extreme right movements operating in Britain since 1945 have largely been characterized as either a direct legacy of the interwar movement or an attempt to reform British fascism under a different guise. This thesis re-examines the continuity between the interwar and the post-war iterations of the extreme right in Britain by focusing on the ideas and activism of Arthur Kenneth (A.K) Chesterton. A high-ranking member of the BUF who made substantial contributions to the party’s propaganda, Chesterton split with Mosley in 1938 to pursue an independent career in extreme right-wing politics that persisted until his death in 1973. Outside of his role in the BUF, Chesterton is best known as a prolific author of conspiratorial nationalist literature, as the head of the League of Empire Loyalists (a small right-wing pressure group active from 1954 to 1967), and as the chairman of the National Front between 1967 and 1971. Using Chesterton as a ii focal point, this study examines the problems encountered by Britain’s extreme right in attempting to reconcile the nature and methods of fascism with the prevailing conditions of British politics across seven decades of the twentieth century. While the primary contribution is to the historiography of extreme right-wing movements in Britain, it also expands ongoing theoretical debates regarding the nature and definitional limits of fascism itself. iii TABLE OF CONTENTS THESIS DECLARATION i ABSTRACT ii TABLE OF CONTENTS iv ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS vi Introduction 1 A.K. Chesterton: a biographical overview 5 Primary sources 19 Thesis structure 27 Chapter 1: Situating and interpreting fascism 28 Fascism 28 The Extreme Right and Neo-Fascism 49 British Fascism 59 Post-war fascism and the extreme right in Britain 74 Chapter 2: A.K. Chesterton and British fascism, 1918-1940. 89 World War I and Life on the Rand, 1915-1924 90 Journalism and Theatrical Criticism, 1924-1933 111 The British Union of Fascists, 1933-1938 121 Fascism after Mosley, 1938-1940 149 Chapter 3: A.K. Chesterton and the British extreme right, 1940-1973 159 World War II, 1940-1943 159 After-Victory and the National Front, 1943-1945 163 Truth and the Crisis of Empire, 1945-1953 184 The League of Empire Loyalists, 1953-1965 195 The National Front, 1967-1973. 223 Chapter 4: A.K. Chesterton, anti-Semitism and racial nationalism. 245 Colonialism, paternalism and biological racism 247 iv The origins of British anti-Semitism and the ‘Jewish question’. 261 Jewish international finance and the Protocols conspiracy 276 British fascism and political anti-Semitism 284 Racism, anti-Semitism and conspiracy after 1945. 311 Conclusion 333 ‘A political oxymoron’: the problem of fascism in Britain. 337 Bibliography 357 v ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I would like to express profound gratitude to my supervisors, Andrew Webster, Michael Durey and Michael Sturma, for the support, feedback and encouragement they have provided throughout the course of my doctoral studies. I would also like to thank James Crossland, who served as my primary supervisor in the early stages of my research, and upon whose advice I pursued this topic in the first place. I am fortunate to have received support and guidance from the School of Arts at Murdoch University, and the Department of History in particular. I am grateful to the many library and archival staff who helped facilitate my research, particularly Lizzie Richmond at the University of Bath. I would like to acknowledge David L. Baker, for assembling and donating the material housed within the UBA Chesterton Collection. Special thanks to Jill Rainnie for accommodating me during the course of my stay in the United Kingdom. I am thankful for the many friends and family who have supported me during the research, writing and editing of my thesis. I am especially grateful to my brother Caleb, and my partner Tessia – thank you both for your kindness and patience in the final stages of my candidature. Last but not least, I dedicate this work to my parents, John and Annette LeCras, to whom I owe an infinite debt of gratitude. Without your love, support and proofreading, I would never have been able to achieve this milestone. vi Introduction More than any other movement of the 20th century, fascism defined itself in terms of action, disdaining theory and principle in favour of a violent struggle for national redemption. It has thus proven a vexing subject for historians and political theorists, who have struggled to extract meaning from its bloody, chaotic and contradictory legacy.1 Richard Bosworth, a distinguished figure in the study of Italian Fascism, aptly summarized the problems of trying to draw a static definition of fascism from the ‘moving parts’ of its history: ‘If theorists stop the machine, they may be able to see fascism more clearly and paint it more strikingly. But they simultaneously lose the context in which fascism lived and upon which, despite itself, it was dependent’.2 Analysing the experience of individual fascists provides a useful starting point for understanding fascism, not merely as a set of abstract principles, but as a living movement driven by the actions, ideas and ‘mobilizing passions’ of its adherents.3 In the case of British fascism, studies centred on individual activists are of particular importance, since the movement was sustained through much of its existence by a small coterie of dedicated radicals, who imagined themselves the vanguard of a revolution that never arrived. Arthur Kenneth (hereafter A.K.) Chesterton was an outstanding figure within Britain’s extreme right, whose life has already served as the basis for David Baker’s 1 Throughout the course of this thesis, ‘fascism’ is used to denote the generic term, while ‘Fascism’ refers to the Italian or ‘classical’ variety from which the term was originally derived. For an example of this convention elsewhere, see Roger Griffin, The Nature of Fascism (London: Routledge, 1991), p. 1. 2 R. J. B. Bosworth, ‘Introduction’, The Oxford Handbook of Fascism (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007), pp. 5-6. 3 Robert Paxton, The Anatomy of Fascism (London: Vintage, 2004), p. 219. 1 acclaimed political biography, a work focused primarily on the interwar period. Although there is some inherent value in supplementing Baker’s work with the details of Chesterton’s post-war career, this study seeks to move beyond the realm of a biographical inquiry, adopting a broader and more critical approach to the history and definition of British fascism as a whole. Chesterton, for the purposes of this study, serves as a lens for an exploration of the problems that confronted the extreme right in Britain, a nation ill-disposed to the revolutionary ideas and violent methods that were integral to interwar fascism, as well as the esoteric racism and anti- Semitism that buoyed the post-war movements. Chesterton was never as prominent or influential as Oswald Mosley, the undisputed leader of Britain’s interwar fascist movement and the man who has received the most interest from scholars and the general public. Chesterton also failed to acquire the personal notoriety of William Joyce, a British fascist whose transformation into a Nazi propagandist led to a sensational trial that culminated in his execution for treason. Chesterton is notable among British fascists, not for his political stature or infamy, but for his persistence. The length and breadth of his career on the extreme right saw him play a crucial part in two of the most prominent organizations to be classified under the banner of British fascism: Mosley’s British Union of Fascists (BUF), of which Chesterton was an active member between 1933 and 1938, and the National Front, which he helped found and oversaw as chairman between 1967 and 1971. Chesterton’s life prior to joining Mosley and the ethos he espoused as a member of the BUF made him an exemplar of a distinctively British variant of fascism. Chesterton’s upbringing, divided between England and South Africa, 2 impressed upon him a form of patriotism centred on 19th century ideals of imperial Britain. The suffering Chesterton endured as a soldier in the First World War left him preoccupied with military discipline and comradery, which he contrasted with the hollow commercialism of the civilian world. Eventually, Chesterton’s radical nationalism and cultural pessimism led him to a movement that claimed to embody the spirit and sacrifices of the front generation. From 1933 onwards, he embraced the most radical tendencies of interwar fascism, decrying Britain’s decadent state and calling for a national revolution to overhaul all aspects of society.