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The Life of Henry Hamilton Beamish HATERS, BAITERS AND WOULD-BE DICTATORS For fifty-five years, from 1919 until 1975, The Britons published Jew-hating literature. For the forty years until his death in 1948, the founder and president of The Britons, Henry Hamilton Beamish, devoted his life to touring the world as an obsessive preacher of this hatred. Using material he has collected over the past thirty years, Nick Toczek tells their story. This is the first complete history of the organisation, which was the most prolific and influential advocate of extreme prejudice against all things Jewish – not least as the publisher of that notorious forgery The Protocols of the Elders of Zion. Likewise, this is the first biography of Beamish. Putting both The Britons and Beamish into context, this book also examines and explains their precursors, their contemporaries and their legacy. Here, then, are detailed accounts of several anti-Jewish organisations and individuals. These include the late Victorian anti-Semitism of Arnold White and the British Brothers League; the curious life of Rotha Lintorn-Orman, who was the unlikely founder of British Fascisti, Britain’s first fascist party; Anglo-American supporters of Hitler; the lives and roles of extreme haters such as Arnold Leese and Colin Jordan; and the whole history of The Protocols, including the key role played by American motor magnate Henry Ford. This shocking history of hatred takes us from South Africa to Nazi Germany, from America to Rhodesia. Nick Toczek is a writer, performer and political researcher. Oh, mind of man, what can you not be made to believe? Johann Adam Weishaupt (6 February 1748–18 November 1830) (German law professor, philosopher and founder of The Illuminati) HATERS, BAITERS AND WOULD-BE DICTATORS Anti-Semitism and the UK Far Right Nick Toczek First published 2016 by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN and by Routledge 711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017 Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business © 2016 Nick Toczek The right of Nick Toczek to be identified as author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data A catalog record for this book has been requested ISBN: 978-1-138-85348-5 (hbk) ISBN: 978-1-138-85350-8 (pbk) ISBN: 978-1-315-72274-0 (ebk) Typeset in Bembo by Book Now Ltd, London DEDICATION To my father, John Toczek (né Hans), who died in 2012 at the age of ninety-one. It was his experiences during and after the Second World War that first awakened my interest in the politics of prejudice. He and his twin brother, then in their teens, were among the very few members of my extended paternal family to escape the Holocaust. As a pair of Germans arriving in wartime Britain, they were arrested under Defence Regulation 18b as enemy aliens and jailed on the Isle of Man alongside British fascists. The war years persuaded my father there could be no God. After the war, as a naturalised British Jew with a strong German accent who had chosen to reject his faith and to marry outside it, he learned to deal with a broad spectrum of prejudices. A couple of years before he died, the BBC contacted him to say that they had found his father’s grave in France, close to the camp in which he and many other Jews had died. This was the first my father knew of the camp and of the existence of a grave. So, more than fifty years after that death, Dad featured in a documentary which ended with him placing flowers on the grave of my grandfather Otto. This page intentionally left blank CONTENTS Acknowledgements ix Introduction xi 1 The life of Henry Hamilton Beamish 1 2 Arnold White and the British Brothers League 74 3 The Britons: the first three decades, 1919–1949 83 4 The Britons Publishing Company throughout the 1950s 103 5 The Britons Publishing Company: the 1960s and 1970s 124 6 Arnold Leese and The Britons 143 7 Colin Jordan and The Britons 159 8 The Protocols: origins, circulation and influence 168 9 Henry Ford and The Protocols 182 Postscript: the legacy of Henry Hamilton Beamish and The Britons 190 Illustrations 134–142 Appendix 1 Precursors of The Britons: 1900–1919 192 Appendix 2 Peer groups of The Britons: 1920–1939 202 Appendix 3 Some independent right-wing British journals 232 Appendix 4 Key figures in The Britons 244 Appendix 5 Draft constitution of The Britons 259 Appendix 6 Publications by The Britons 268 Appendix 7 Addresses of The Britons 273 Some selected further reading 274 Conclusion 276 Afterword 278 Index 280 This page intentionally left blank ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I owe special thanks to my friend, the author and researcher Martin Dur ham, for repeatedly urging me to get back to undertaking far-right research after AK Press published my slim book The Bigger Tory Vote back in 1991. Over the years, I have given Martin and other researchers access to the vast right-wing archive I have collected. However, until now I have not made the time to use these resources myself. It was with Martin’s admonishments in mind that, twenty-two years later, during 2013, I eventually sat down and began this book. For the most part, I have not had to leave my house for research purposes. My own collection supplied the core source material, checked and embellished through internet research. I do, however, owe a debt of gratitude to the Churchill Archive Centre at the University of Cambridge, where I was able to look through some of the Beamish family papers. I would also like to acknowledge the generous help given by two key suppliers of rare far-right literature – Blog Rare Books here in the UK (www.blograrebooks. co.uk) and the Patriot Bookshop in the USA (on AbeBook.com). My thanks go to Craig Fowlie at Routledge for being keen to consider this book for publication from the moment I first phoned him to offer it, and for being such a knowledgeable, informative and constructive editor; and to his assistant, Emma Chappell, for her hard work on my behalf, especially in replying helpfully, quickly and cheerfully to all my procedural queries. Finally, I owe thanks to my wife, Gaynor, not just for patiently tolerating my often obsessive work on this book, but also for constantly reminding me that there’s more to life than writing! This page intentionally left blank INTRODU CTION I started this book almost two years ago with the intention of writing a history of The Britons, the small specifically anti-Jewish organisation founded in 1919 by a little-known man called Henry Hamilton Beamish. However, as the book came together, I began to realise the importance of extending it to include coverage of The Britons’ precursors and of the numerous contemporary bigoted organisations with which they and their members cooperated, interacted, feuded and campaigned. The result is a book that has expanded to cover twentieth-century British anti- Jewish activism as a whole. In the course of doing so, it also deals with broader British xenophobia, American and European Jew-hatred, and anti-Jewish activity as far afield as Russia and the British colonies. It’s a popular misconception that twentieth-century Jew-hatred in Britain was spearheaded almost exclusively by Oswald Mosley and his followers via his pre-war British Union of Fascists and his post-war Union Movement, but there is a much bigger picture. While the Mosleyites played an important and high-profile role, this has been covered extensively by other authors and researchers. I have therefore focused on the rest of the story. Before starting into this book, readers may find it useful first to skim through appendices 1 to 4. In doing so, they will familiarise themselves with many of the organisations, journals and individuals referred to in the text. Throughout, I have avoided footnotes in an effort to make the book an uninterrupted linear narrative (the note cues that appear in the text refer to the list of main sources of information which is given at the end of each chapter). It’s also inevitable that occasional reference to the first four appendices serves as a useful means of clarifying what would otherwise be a confusing text milling with characters and organisations. In order to avoid further clogging up the whole text with a mass of people, organisations, incidents and other details, I have opted for a series of chronological xii Introdu ction accounts, beginning with the life of Henry Hamilton Beamish. Much of this is new. Most accounts elsewhere devote little more than a few paragraphs to his life. My second chapter tackles Britain’s seminal anti-Jewish organisation the British Brothers League, of which little has previously been written. In the course of this chapter I also introduce the key political writers whose work deeply influenced the anti-Jewish thinking of Beamish and his compatriots in The Britons.
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