View metadata, citation and similar papers at core.ac.uk brought to you by CORE provided by Wolverhampton Intellectual Repository and E-theses The British Union of Fascists in the Midlands, 1932 – 1940 Craig Morgan BA, MA A thesis submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements of the University of Wolverhampton for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy. May 2008 This work or any part thereof has not previously been presented in any form to the University or to any other body whether for the purposes of assessment, publication or for any other purpose (unless otherwise indicated). Save for any express acknowledgements, references and/or bibliographies cited in the work, I confirm that the intellectual content of the work is the result of my own efforts and of no other person. The right of Craig Morgan to be identified as author of this work is asserted in accordance with ss.77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. At this date copyright is owned by the author. Signature ……………………………………….. Date ……………………………........................ Abstract This thesis provides an examination of the emergence and development of Sir Oswald Mosley’s British Union of Fascists in the Midlands between 1932 and 1940. It charts the fascist presence in four major cities: Birmingham, Stoke-on-Trent, Coventry and Leicester. The BUF is the largest and most important fascist movement to have ever existed in Britain. Mosleyite fascism in the Midlands as a region has never before been investigated and represents a significant gap in the historiography of British fascist studies. Alongside affording valuable insight into Mosleyite fascism at the regional level, the study will illuminate further understanding of the BUF nationally. The fascist experience in the Midlands is used to test and contribute to arguments about the national movement in the secondary literature relating to three themes: (a) the social class composition of BUF membership; (b) the strength of BUF membership; and (c) the focus of BUF propaganda. Finally, four main areas generally recognised as the reasons for national failure are discussed to explain the long-term marginalisation of the BUF in the Midlands. Table of Contents. Introduction. Page 1 Chapter One: Themes and Sources. Page 3 Chapter Two: The BUF in Birmingham, 1932 – 1940. Page 25 Chapter Three: The BUF in Stoke-on-Trent, 1932 – 1940. Page 89 Chapter Four: The BUF in Coventry, 1932 – 1940. Page 132 Chapter Five: The BUF in Leicester, 1932 – 1940. Page 167 Conclusion. Page 204 Bibliography. Page 222 Introduction Founded by Sir Oswald Mosley in October 1932 and proscribed in summer 19401, the British Union of Fascists (hereafter BUF) remains Britain’s largest and most significant fascist movement. Although an enduring scholarly interest has generated a sizeable volume of critical literature considerable gaps remain in our understanding of the BUF. A major gap in the historiography is a lack of knowledge of the BUF in the Midlands. The first aim of this thesis is to fill this gap by producing a detailed empirical examination of the emergence and development of the BUF in the region between 1932 and 1940. The BUF in the Midlands has been under researched. This is despite the Midlands’ large population and economic importance during the 1930s, and even though non-fascist contemporaries and a number of post-war scholars have noted that the Mosley movement was active in the region and at various points in the decade able to attract a following. The Midlands as a region has never been subjected to study in regard to its experience of Mosleyite fascism. This thesis will consider four cities: Birmingham, Stoke-on-Trent, Coventry, and Leicester; the leading municipalities of the west Midlands, north Midlands, south Midlands and east Midlands respectively. Birmingham is the only principal city in the region to have been examined concerning the presence of the BUF. It was explored by Brewer in 1975 and his book on the subject was published in 1984 before the release of invaluable government documentation on British fascism and the local Mosley movement2. The current study, in discussing Birmingham, both draws on and critically considers Brewer’s work and incorporates relevant new information. The BUF in Stoke-on-Trent, Coventry and Leicester 1 The BUF was dissolved in summer 1940 when hundreds of Mosleyites were interned and the organisation pronounced illegal. Defence Regulation 18b (1a) was introduced into British law which allowed for the arrest and internment without trial of members of organisations which were adjudged to be subject to foreign influence or control, or whose leaders enjoyed past or present associations with leaders of now enemy governments, or who were deemed sympathetic to the system of government of enemy powers. Between 23 May and 24 May 1940 at least 24 leading members of the BUF were arrested, including Sir Oswald Mosley, and on 4 June the decision was made to extend the round-up to include some 350 local officials. The dragnet continued throughout June and July so that by the end of summer 1940 the number of BUF members and supporters arrested and interned under Defence Regulation 18b (1a) totalled 747. On 10 July 1940 under the freshly-passed Defence Regulation 18b (AA) the government declared the BUF a proscribed organisation. A. Simpson, In the Highest Degree Odious. Detention Without Trial in Wartime Britain (Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1992), pp172- 191. 2 J. Brewer, ‘The British Union of Fascists, Sir Oswald Mosley and Birmingham: An analysis of the Content and Context of an Ideology’ (MSocSc, University of Birmingham, 1975); J. Brewer, Mosley’s Men. The British Union of Fascists in the West Midlands (Aldershot, Gower, 1984). 1 has never been studied. The Mosleyite effort to establish a grass roots presence in the Midlands remains, therefore, substantially uncharted. In light of this sizeable knowledge gap the study of the fascist movement in Birmingham, Stoke-on-Trent, Coventry, and Leicester intends to represent a significant addition to the history of politics and right-wing extremism in the Midlands. The second aim is to test and contribute to arguments about the national Mosleyite movement. It is intended that this will illuminate further understanding of the BUF nationally as well as regionally. Pryce-Jones has written that: ‘English fascism cannot be studied in detail until the histories of local branches are written’3, and in recent years detailed local studies have not only added to our stock of knowledge of the BUF at the regional level but have reshaped debate on the fascist movement at the national level. From the immediate post-war period until the early 1980s, scholarly studies of the BUF were, in the words of Rawnsley, ‘history written ‘’’from the top down’’’4. Analysis of the BUF focused almost exclusively on the Mosley movement at the national level. Little or no attention was paid to the movement’s experiences in branches throughout the country. What reference existed to Mosleyite fascism on the ground was limited almost uniformly to a brief mention of the East End of London. From the mid-1980s onwards major local studies have emerged which uncovered an abundance of previously neglected source material. As we shall see, through focusing attention on the experiences of fascist branches in regions of Britain these local studies have challenged a number of long-standing contentions about the national movement in the established literature and raised fresh questions about Mosleyite fascism. Chapter one will review the arguments in the secondary literature surrounding the themes to be addressed in this study and will then consider the strengths and weaknesses of relevant primary sources. Chapters two, three, four, and five chart chronologically the emergence and development of the BUF in Birmingham, Stoke-on-Trent, Coventry, and Leicester between 1932 and 1940 respectively. The concluding chapter will reflect on what these four case-studies reveal about the themes in relation to the local and national Mosley movement. 3 D. Pryce-Jones, Unity Mitford (London, Book Club Associates, 1977), p76. 4 S. Rawnsley, ‘The Membership of the British Union of Fascists’, in K. Lunn and R. Thurlow (eds.) British Fascism (London, Croom Helm, 1980), p150. 2 Chapter One: Themes and Sources. Having explained why a regional study of the BUF in the Midlands represents a much required addition to knowledge of the Mosley movement our attention will now move to the themes which will be addressed and to a reflection on the primary sources which will be utilised in this undertaking. 1. Themes. To date three detailed and extensive studies have been written on the BUF in particular regions. Rawnsley’s reconstruction of the BUF presence in the north of England represented the first such study1. Linehan extended the field of local research into east London, ‘a region where the impact of Mosleyite fascism was more pronounced than at any other location in Britain’2. In an attempt to broaden our knowledge of the BUF’s political fortunes in rural areas Mitchell investigated the development of the Mosley movement in Norfolk, Suffolk and Essex3. In an examination of the findings of these studies three important themes regarding the character of Mosleyite fascism emerge which need to be explored further. These themes are to be discussed in the framework of an existing secondary literature. They are: (a) the social class composition of BUF membership; (b) the strength of BUF membership; and (c) the focus of BUF propaganda. The relevant arguments relating to these themes in the historiography and the way in which they will be engaged in the following account will now be considered. (a) The social class composition of the BUF membership. The nature of the social class composition of the BUF’s membership is recognised as a 1 S.