William Joyce - British Union of Fascists

British Union of Fascists

In 1932, Joyce joined the British Union of Fascists (BUF) under Sir Oswald Mosley, and swiftly became a leading speaker, praised for his power of oratory. The journalist and novelist Cecil Roberts described a speech given by Joyce:

Thin, pale, intense, he had not been speaking many minutes before we were electrified by this man ... so terrifying in its dynamic force, so vituperative, so vitriolic.

In 1934, Joyce was promoted to the BUF's director of propaganda and later appointed deputy leader. As well as being a gifted speaker, Joyce gained the reputation of a savage brawler. His violent rhetoric and willingness to physically confront anti-fascist elements head-on played no small part in further marginalizing the BUF. After the bloody debacle of the June 1934 Olympia rally, Joyce spearheaded the BUF's policy shift from campaigning for economic revival through corporatism to a focus on antisemitism. He was instrumental in changing the name of the BUF to "British Union of Fascists and National Socialists" in 1936, and stood as a party candidate in the 1937 elections to the London County Council. In 1936 Joyce lived for a year in Whitstable, where he owned a radio and electrical shop.

Between April 1934 and 1937, when Mosley sacked him, Joyce also served as Area Administrative Officer for the BUF West Sussex division. Joyce was supported in this role by Norah Elam as Sussex Women’s Organiser, with her partner Dudley Elam taking on the role of Sub-Branch Officer for Worthing. Under this regime, West Sussex was to become a hub of fascist activity, ranging from hosting Blackshirt summer camps to organising meetings and rallies, lunches etc. Norah Elam shared many speaking platforms with Joyce and worked on propaganda speeches for him. One area of particular concern that Joyce had her work on was the government's India Bill (passed in 1935), designed to give a measure of autonomy to India, allowing freedom and the development of limited self-government. Joyce harboured a desire to become Viceroy of India under a Mosley administration should he ever head a BUF government, and is recorded as describing the backers of the bill as "feeble" and "one loathsome, fetid, purulent, tumid mass of hypocrisy, hiding behind Jewish Dictators". Unlike Joyce, the Elams did not escape detention under Defence Regulation 18B; both were arrested on the same day as Mosley in May 1940. The relationship between Joyce and Norah Elam was evidence of the strange bedfellows that politics can bring together. Elam's father had been an Irish Nationalist, while Joyce had been a Unionist and supporter of the Black and Tans. In later life, Elam reported that although she disliked Joyce, she believed that his execution by the British in 1946 was wrong, stating that he should not have been regarded as a traitor to England because he was not English, but Irish.

Joyce was sacked from his paid position when Mosley drastically reduced the BUF staff shortly after the 1937 elections; upon which, Joyce promptly formed a breakaway organisation, the National Socialist League. After the departure of Joyce, the BUF turned its focus away from anti-Semitism and towards activism, opposing a war with Nazi Germany. Though Joyce had been deputy leader of the party from 1933 and an effective fighter and orator, Mosley snubbed him in his autobiography and later denounced him as a traitor because of his wartime activities.