British , the Labour Movement and the State Also by Nigel Copsey

ANTI-FASCISM IN BRITAIN CONTEMPORARY

Also by David Renton

CLASSICAL MARXISM DISSIDENT MARXISM FASCISM, ANTI-FASCISM AND THE 1940s FASCISM: Theory and Practice MARX ON GLOBALISATION THIS ROUGH GAME TROTSKY THE COMMUNIST PARTY OF GREAT BRITAIN SINCE 1920 (with J. Eaden) NEW APPROACHES TO SOCIALIST HISTORY (with K. Flett) THE TWENTIETH CENTURY (with K. Flett) British Fascism, the Labour Movement and the State

Edited by

Nigel Copsey Senior Lecturer in History, University of Teesside, UK and David Renton Research Associate, Rand-Afrikaans University, South Africa and University of Sunderland, UK Editorial matter, selection © Nigel Copsey and David Renton 2005 Ch. 7 © David Renton 2005; Ch. 9 © Nigel Copsey 2005 Also all remaining chapters © Palgrave Macmillan 2005 Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition 2005 978-1-4039-3916-6 All rights reserved. No reproduction, copy or transmission of this publication may be made without written permission. No paragraph 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, 90 Tottenham Court Road, W1T 4LP. Any person who does any unauthorised 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 in 2005 by PALGRAVE MACMILLAN Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire RG21 6XS and 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10010 Companies and representatives throughout the world. PALGRAVE MACMILLAN is the global academic imprint of the Palgrave Macmillan division of St. Martin’s Press, LLC and of Palgrave Macmillan Ltd. Macmillan® is a registered trademark in the United States, United Kingdom and other countries. Palgrave is a registered trademark in the European Union and other countries. ISBN 978-1-349-51960-6 ISBN 978-0-230-52276-3 (eBook) DOI 10.1057/9780230522763 This book is printed on paper suitable for recycling and made from fully managed and sustained forest sources. A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data British fascism, the labour movement, and the state / edited by Nigel Copsey, David Renton. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-1-349-51960-6 1. Fascism – Great Britain – History – 20th century. 2. Great Britain – Politics and government – 20th century. 3. Labor movement – Great Britain – History – 20th century. 4. Anti-fascist movements – Great Britain – History – 20th century. 5.Working class – Great Britain – Political activity – History – 20th century. I. Copsey, Nigel, 1967– II. Renton, Dave, 1972–

DA566.7.B665 2005 335.609410904—dc22 2004059163

10987654321 14 13 12 11 10 09 08 07 06 05 Contents

Notes on Contributors vi

Introduction 1 Nigel Copsey and David Renton 1 ‘The Fascists … are … to be depended upon.’ The British Government, Fascists and Strike-breaking during 1925 and 1926 6 Richard Charles Maguire 2 The Security Service, the Communist Party of Great Britain and British Fascism, 1932–51 27 Richard C. Thurlow 3 ‘A plague on both their houses’: Fascism, Anti-fascism and the Police in the 1940s 46 Graham Macklin 4 Feminism and Anti-fascism in Britain: Militancy Revived? 68 Julie V. Gottlieb 5 ‘Left-Wing Fascism’ in Theory and Practice 95 Philip M. Coupland 6 Practical Anti-fascism? The ‘Aid Spain’ Campaigns in North-East England, 1936–39 118 Lewis H. Mates 7 Guarding the Barricades: Working-class Anti-fascism 1974–79 141 David Renton 8 Whatever Happened to the Labour Movement? Proletarians and the Far Right in Contemporary Britain 160 Thomas P. Linehan 9 Meeting the Challenge of Contemporary British Fascism? The Labour Party’s Response to the National Front and the 182 Nigel Copsey

Index 203

v Notes on Contributors

Nigel Copsey is Senior Lecturer in Modern and Contemporary History at the University of Teesside. Dr Copsey is the author of Anti-Fascism in Britain (Palgrave-Macmillan, 2000) and Contemporary British Fascism: The British National Party and the Quest for Legitimacy (Palgrave-Macmillan, 2004). He has also published several book chapters and journal articles in the field of right-wing extremism, fascism and anti-fascism. Philip Coupland completed his PhD in the Department of History at the University of Warwick in 2000. From 2001 to 2004 he worked as a researcher for the European Commission funded project ‘The Churches and European Integration’ in the Department of History at the University of Glasgow. Dr Coupland has written on British fascism and other topics of British political history in the Journal of Contemporary History, Twentieth Century British History, Journal of British Studies and elsewhere. Currently he is writing a monograph for Palgrave-Macmillan about British Christians, national identity and European integration. Julie V. Gottlieb was educated at McGill University and Cambridge University, and was a post-doctoral fellow at the University of Toronto. She has taught at the University of Manchester, University of Bristol and is currently a lecturer in Modern British History at the University of Sheffield. Her publications include Feminine Fascism: Women in Britain’s Fascist Movement, 1923–1945 (I.B. Tauris, 2000/2003) and The Culture of Fascism: Visions of the Far Right in Britain (I.B. Tauris, 2004, co-edited with Thomas Linehan), and she is currently working on a project on ‘British Women and Foreign Policy between the Wars’. Thomas Linehan is a Lecturer in History at Brunel University. He is the author of British Fascism, 1918–1939: Parties, Ideology and Culture (Manchester University Press, 2000), East London for Mosley: The British Union of Fascists in East London and South-West Essex 1933–1940 (Frank Cass, 1996), and a co-editor, with Dr Julie Gottlieb, of The Culture of Fascism. Visions of the Far Right in Britain (I.B. Tauris, 2004). Dr Linehan is currently working on a book on the interwar British Communist Party. Graham Macklin completed his PhD on post-war British fascism at the University of Sheffield in 2002 before taking up his current position as Reader Advisor at the National Archives, Kew, London. He has published

vi Notes on Contributors vii several articles on British fascism, including contributions to Patterns of Prejudice, Totalitarian Movements and Religious Politics and the BBC History Magazine. His book on and post-war British fascism will be published in 2005 by I.B. Tauris. Richard Maguire is Tutor in Modern British History at the University of East Anglia, Norwich. His major research interest is the history of the state, particularly focusing on British, German and Russian history. His most recent publication in this area was ‘Reassessing the British Government’s Emergency Organisation on Red Friday, 31 June 1925’ Contemporary British History 18/1 (2004) and he is currently working on a comparative history of the state in the ‘Long’ Cold War between 1917 and 1990. Lewis Mates finished his PhD thesis, entitled ‘The United Front and the Popular Front in the North-East of England, 1936–1939’ in 2002. He has recently published articles on the Communist Party in the north-east of England in the 1930s and the Tyneside foodship and the popular front. He is currently working at the University of Northumbria on an ESRC- funded project examining post-war activism in the Labour Party. David Renton is a Research Associate of the Rand-Afrikaans University and of the University of Sunderland. He is also an Equality Support Official for the lecturers’ union NATFHE and is a member of the steering commit- tee of the anti-fascist organisation . Dr Renton is the author of numerous books including Fascism: Theory and Practice (Pluto, 1999) and a forthcoming history of the Anti-Nazi League (New Clarion Press, 2005). Richard Thurlow is a Senior Lecturer in History at the University of Sheffield. He is the author of Fascism in Britain (Blackwell, 1987), The Secret State (Blackwell, 1994) and Fascism in Modern Britain (Sutton, 2000), and several articles on the political surveillance of the Communist Party of Great Britain and the British Union of Fascists.