British Fascists - Decline

Decline

Having been hit hard by the split from the General Strike the British Fascists attempted to move gradually towards a more defined fascism, starting in 1927 by adopting a blue shirt and beret uniform in the style of similar movements in Europe. That same year they attempted to organise a Remembrance Day parade past Buckingham Palace where they requested the King should salute them from the balcony but the requests were rejected and the parade did not take place. The progress towards fascism did not however come quick enough for Arnold Leese who in 1928 split from the group, which he denounced as "conservatism with knobs on" to establish his own Imperial Fascist League (IFL), a much more hard-line group that emphasised anti-Semitism. Before long however the British Fascists began to advocate a more authoritarian government in which the monarch would take a leading role in government as well as advocating the establishment of a Benito Mussolini style corporate state, policy changes made possible by the departure of Blakeney, who was committed to representative democracy and whose main economic opinion was opposition to the gold standard. Even without Blakeney they retained some of their earlier Conservative-linked views, such loyalty to the king, anti-trade union legislation, free trade within the British Empire and a general preference for the rural, although these were bolstered by fascist-influenced policies such as limiting the franchise, gradual purification of the "English race" and stringent restrictions on immigration and the activities of immigrants admitted to Britain. However as Martin Pugh has pointed out the British Fascists actively encouraged comparisons with the Conservative Party, feeling that it would a sense of legitimacy and Britishness to their activities, particularly as they faced harsh criticism from not only the left but also some Tories for their increasingly paramilitary structure. Nonetheless some Tories were close to the group, with Charles Burn sitting on the Grand Council and support being lent by the likes of Patrick Hannon, Robert Tatton Bower, Robert Burton-Chadwick and Alan Lennox-Boyd. Indeed in May 1925 Hannon even booked a chamber in the House of Commons to host an event for the British Fascists.

After 1931, they abandoned their attempts to form a distinctly British version of Fascism, and instead adopted the full programme of Mussolini and his National Fascist Party. The already weakened group split further in 1932 over the issue of a merger with Oswald Mosley's New Party. The proposal was accepted by Neil Francis Hawkins of the Headquarters Committee and his allies Lieutenant-Colonel H.W. Johnson and E.G. Mandeville Roe although the female leadership turned the proposal down due to objections over serving under Mosley. Indeed the British Fascists had protested against public meetings being addressed by Mosley as early as 1927 when they denounced the then Labour MP as a dangerous socialist. As a consequence Francis Hawkins broke away and took much of the male membership of the group with him with the New Party becoming the British Union of Fascists (BUF) soon afterwards. Relations with the BUF were as a result frosty for the remainder of the group's life and, although Mosley dismissed the British Fascists as "three old ladies and a couple of office boys", in 1933 a BUF fighting squad wrecked the group's London offices after British Fascists members had heckled the BUF headquarters.

By this stage in their development the British Fascists' membership had plummeted with only a hardcore of members left. Various schemes were floated in an attempt to reinvigorate the movement although none succeeded. Archibald Whitmore announced a plan to turn the British Fascists into an Ulster loyalist group and successor to the Ulster Volunteers although, after claiming that he was preparing to being recruitment in Northern Ireland, nothing came of this. A small group did exist in the Irish Free State claiming to have a thousand members although in fact having no more than 25 active in Dublin under H.R. Ledbeater. Favouring reunification with the UK, the group was involved in sending anti-Semitic leaflets to prominent Jews such as Robert Briscoe. It sought a merger with the right-wing Army Comrades Association but this was rejected by Eoin O'Duffy due to their pro-British stance. Plans for a merger with the IFL did not get off the ground and plans for a merger with Graham Seton Hutchison's National Workers Party were also abandoned when it became clear that, far from having the 20,000 members in Mansfield alone that Seton Hutchison claimed, the party was little more than a one-man show.

In a bid to reverse their decline the party adopted a strongly anti-semitic platform, Thurlow notes: 'it was noticeable that the BF became increasingly anti-semitic in its death throes.' In 1933 Lord and Lady Downe, as representatives of the British Fascists, entertained Nazi German envoy Gunther Schmidt-Lorenzen at their country estate and suggested to him that the Nazis should avoid any links with Mosley, whom Lady Downe accused of being in the pay of Jewish figures such as Baron Rothschild and Sir Philip Sassoon. Fellow member Madame Arnaud repreated similar allegations about Mosley to another German official, Dr Margarete Gartner of the Economic Policy Association. However by this stage Linton-Orman's mother had cut her off financially after hearing lurid tales of debauchery involving the fascist leader and so the group fell into debt until being declared bankrupt in 1934 when a Colonel Wilson called in a £500 loan. This effectively brought the British Fascists to a conclusion, with Rotha Lintorn-Orman dying the following year.