Fascism
He defected from the Unionists in 1931, to join Sir Oswald Mosley’s New Party, and did not contest the 1931 general election.
He was a close friend of Mosley and helped him to pursue his fascist ambitions from behind the scenes, by supporting him financially and by contributing mainly anonymous articles to The Blackshirt, including "The Letters of Lucifer". WED Allen also wrote a book BUF, Oswald Mosley and British Fascism (1934) under the pen name of James Drennan. It was believed that assertions he was an MI5 informant were false however documents now available in the National Archive confirm that he was interviewed by MI5 and gave over information regaurding the BUF's funding from Fascist Italy.
In the pre-World War II years, he traveled a lot and conducted extensive research on the history of the peoples of the Caucasus and Anatolia. In 1930, along with Sir Oliver Wardrop, he founded the Georgian Historical Society which published its own journal Georgica dedicated to Kartvelian studies.
In the 1940s, he accompanied Orde Wingate on his mission to Abyssinia, and wrote a book of his experiences called Guerilla War in Africa.
Allen was a Foreign Service officer from 1943 until he stepped down and returned to his native Ulster in 1949. Together with his two younger brothers, he ran David Allen's, a major bill-posting company.
Read more about this topic: William Edward David Allen
Famous quotes containing the word fascism:
“Democracy is the menopause of Western society, the Grand Climacteric of the body social. Fascism is its middle-aged lust.”
—Jean Baudrillard (b. 1929)
“The strategic adversary is fascism ... the fascism in us all, in our heads and in our everyday behavior, the fascism that causes us to love power, to desire the very thing that dominates and exploits us.”
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