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Varieties of Anti-Fascism Varieties of Anti-Fascism Also by Nigel Copsey ANTI-FASCISM IN BRITAIN CONTEMPORARY BRITISH FASCISM: The British National Party and the Quest for Legitimacy BRITISH FASCISM, THE LABOUR MOVEMENT AND THE STATE (edited with D. Renton) Andrzej Olechnowicz WORKING-CLASS HOUSING IN ENGLAND BETWEEN THE WARS: The Becontree Estate THE MONARCHY AND THE BRITISH NATION 1780 TO THE PRESENT (edited) Varieties of Anti-Fascism Britain in the Inter-War Period Edited By Nigel Copsey Reader in Modern History, Teesside University, UK Andrzej Olechnowicz Lecturer in Modern British History, Durham University, UK Palgrave macmillan Editorial matter and selection © Nigel Copsey and Andrzej Olechnowicz 2010 All remaining chapters © their respective authors 2010 Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edtion 2010 978-0-230-00648-5 All rights reserved. No reproduction, copy or transmission of this publication may be made without written permission. No portion of this publication may be reproduced, copied or transmitted save with written permission or in accordance with the provisions of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, or under the terms of any licence permitting limited copying issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency, Saffron House, 6–10 Kirby Street, London EC1N 8TS. Any person who does any unauthorized act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages. The authors have asserted their rights to be identified as the authors of this work in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. First published 2010 by PALGRAVE MACMILLAN Palgrave Macmillan in the UK is an imprint of Macmillan Publishers Limited, registered in England, company number 785998, of Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire RG21 6XS. Palgrave Macmillan in the US is a division of St Martin’s Press LLC, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10010. Palgrave Macmillan is the global academic imprint of the above companies and has companies and representatives throughout the world. Palgrave® and Macmillan® are registered trademarks in the United States, the United Kingdom, Europe and other countries ISBN 978-1-349-28231-9 ISBN 978-0-230-28267-4 (eBook) DOI 10.1057/9780230282674 This book is printed on paper suitable for recycling and made from fully managed and sustained forest sources. Logging, pulping and manufacturing processes are expected to conform to the environmental regulations of the country of origin. A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. A catalogue record for this book is available from the Library of Congress. 10987654321 19 18 17 16 15 14 13 12 11 10 This volume is dedicated to the memory of Paul Tajfel (1955–1985). Contents List of Abbreviations ix Acknowledgements x List of Contributors xi Preface: Towards a New Anti-Fascist ‘Minimum’? xiv Nigel Copsey Introduction: Historians and the Study of Anti-Fascism in 1 Britain Andrzej Olechnowicz Part I Political Parties 29 1. Communist Culture and Anti-Fascism in Inter-War 31 Britain Thomas Linehan 2. ‘Every time they made a Communist, they made a 52 Fascist’: The Labour Party and Popular Anti-Fascism in the 1930s Nigel Copsey 3. The Conservative Party, Fascism and Anti-Fascism 73 1918–1939 Philip Williamson Part II Civil Society and the State 99 4. Varieties of Feminist Responses to Fascism in Inter-War 101 Britain Julie Gottlieb 5. ‘I was following the lead of Jesus Christ’: Christian 119 Anti-Fascism in 1930s England Tom Lawson 6. ‘It certainly isn’t cricket!’: Media Responses to Mosley 140 and the BUF Janet Dack vii viii Contents 7. Passive and Active Anti-Fascism: The State and National 162 Security, 1923–45 Richard Thurlow Part III Intellectual Responses 181 8. Anti-Fascist Europe Comes to Britain: Theorising 183 Fascism as a Contribution to Defeating it Dan Stone 9. Labour Theorises Fascism: A. D. Lindsay and Harold Laski 202 Andrzej Olechnowicz 10. The Limits of Pro-Fascism and Anti-Fascism: 224 G. K. Chesterton and Arthur Bryant Julia Stapleton Part IV Final Perspectives 245 11. Anti-Fascism and the Post-War British Establishment 247 Richard Griffiths Index 265 List of Abbreviations AIA Artists’ International Association BEU British Empire Union BF British Fascists BUF British Union of Fascists Comintern Communist International CP Communist Party CPGB Communist Party of Great Britain CRA Constitutional Research Association ENA English National Association BNP British National Party GCCS Government Code and Cypher School SB Special Branch HUMINT Human Intelligence IIB Industrial Intelligence Board ILP Independent Labour Party KPD Communist Party of Germany LBC Left Book Club MRP Mouvement Républicain Populaire NEC National Executive Committee NF National Fascists IFL Imperial Fascist League NJC National Joint Council PLP Parliamentary Labour Party TUC Trades Union Congress ODC Open Door Council ODI Open Door International RC Right Club SPG Six Point Group WIL Women’s International League WEA Workers’ Educational Association WILPF Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom YCL Young Communist League ix Acknowledgements The origins of this volume stretch back to conversations that the editors had following a conference on fascism and the labour movement held at the University of Leeds in November 2003. We both agreed on the overriding need for a new approach to the study of British anti-fascism, one that recognised that not all anti-fascism in inter-war Britain was ‘active’. Whilst still retaining an appreciation of the part played by left- wing anti-fascist activists, we felt that other, and potentially equally significant, varieties of anti-fascism had been ignored. For us, a more inclusive definition of our subject (implied but not fully developed in Anti-Fascism in Britain) was essential in order to capture anti-fascism’s richly variegated form. Supportive of a broader concept of anti-fascism, we then solicited contributions from a range of academics that we thought could extend the scope of study to neglected areas, and offer a far more elaborate and nuanced understanding of anti-fascism in inter- war Britain. Following a lengthy period of project gestation, our con- tributors finally gathered at a symposium at the University of Durham in March 2008. The papers presented at that symposium form the basis of the wide-ranging chapters in this volume. It is at this point that the editors would like to express their gratitude to the contributors who were most efficient in the delivery of their final chapters. We would also like to thank the History Department at the University of Durham and the History Research Group at Teesside University for their support in both the funding of the symposium and in the preparation of the final manuscript. Nigel Copsey and Andrzej Olechnowicz, Teesside and Durham, May 2009. x List of Contributors Nigel Copsey is Reader in Modern History at Teesside University. His research interests lie in the study of historic and contemporary fascism and anti-fascism. He is the author of Anti-Fascism in Britain (2000); Contemporary British Fascism: The British National Party and the Quest for Legitimacy (2004, 2008); and (ed., with D. Renton) British Fascism, the Labour Movement and the State (2005). He is currently working on a volume entitled British National Party: Contemporary Perspectives as well as a transnational study of anti-fascism. Janet Dack is a former civil servant who is currently a PhD student at Teesside University. She is writing a thesis exploring areas of similarity and difference in fascist and mainstream views based on a comparison of the British mainstream and fascist inter-war press. Her research interests include democracy, extremism and anti-fascism. Julie Gottlieb is a lecturer in Modern History at the University of Sheffield. She is the author of Feminine Fascism: Women in Britain’s Fascist Movement, 1923–1945 (2000); co-editor (with Thomas Linehan) of The Culture of Fascism: Visions of the Far Right in Britain (2004), and (with Richard Toye) Making Reputations: Power, Persuasion and the Individual in Modern British Politics (2005). Her current project – ‘“Guilty Women”: Gender, Foreign Policy and Appeasement in Inter-War Britain’ – examines women’s resistance to fascism and to war in the 1930s. Richard Griffiths was formerly Professor of French at King’s College London. He has written widely on the British and French extreme Right. His many publications include Fellow Travellers of the Right: British Enthusiasts for Nazi Germany, 1933–39 (1980); Patriotism Perverted: Captain Ramsay, the Right Club, and British Anti-Semitism 1939–1940 (1998); and An Intelligent Person’s Guide to Fascism (2000). Tom Lawson is a lecturer in History at the University of Winchester. His research interests lie primarily in the field of Holocaust Studies and modern religious history. His recent publications include: The Church of England and the Holocaust: Christianity, Memory and Nazism (2006); xi xii List of Contributors and (ed. with James Jordan) The Memory of the Holocaust in Australia (2008). Thomas Linehan is a lecturer in History at Brunel University. He is the author of Communism in Britain, 1920–39. From the Cradle to the Grave (2007); British Fascism, 1918–1939: Parties, Ideology and Culture (2000); East London for Mosley: The British Union of Fascists in East London and South-West Essex 1933–1940 (1996); and co-editor (with Julie Gottlieb) of The Culture of Fascism: Visions of the Far Right in Britain (2004). Andrzej Olechnowicz is a lecturer in History at Durham University. He is the author of Working-Class Housing in England between the Wars: The Becontree Estate (1997) and editor of The Monarchy and the British Nation 1780 to the Present (2007). Julia Stapleton is Reader in Politics at Durham University. Her research interests lie in British political thought and intellectual history during the first half of the twentieth century. She is the author of Englishness and the Study of Politics: The Social and Political Thought of Ernest Barker (1994); Sir Arthur Bryant and National History in Twentieth- Century Britain (2005); and Christianity, Patriotism and Nationhood: The England of G.
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