Alexander Raven Thomson - British Union of Fascists

British Union of Fascists

He joined the British Union of Fascists in 1933 and soon rose to the post of Director of Policy, from where he became the leading ideological light in the party and a close associate of Oswald Mosley and Neil Francis Hawkins. Whilst in this position he produced his seminal work The Coming Corporate State (1938), in which he set out the vision of a BUF government in Britain. Thomson envisaged the formation of twenty corporations, each controlling a specific sector of the economy. These corporations would be further divided up to cover each individual industry and would also feed into a National Corporation, which would effectively form the government. Corporations would have equal representation for employers, workers and consumers, with elections to the corporations taking the place of existing political activity. Thomson became a leading figure in the BUF and in 1937 he represented the party in Municipal elections in Bethnal Green (SW), winning 23.17% of the votes and finishing ahead of the Liberal candidates. Although he was not elected, the result marked a good total for the BUF. His status in the party now assured, Thomson became editor of the party weekly, Action, in 1939. An important figure in the BUF, he served for a time as Mosley's representative to Germany, a role in which he was closely watched by MI5. He shared with the Nazis a strong anti-Semitism. Mosley admired Thomson for his intellect and would later describe him as an "honest man and devoted patriot", although he was also known to privately criticise Thomson as something of a 'yes-man'.

Following the outbreak of war Thomson devised a plan to attack the Nordic League as 'Nazi traitors' in the hope of establishing the BUF's patriotic credentials, although it came to nothing and actually ran alongside attempts by Francis Hawkins to establish BUF control over the League. Along with most of the leading members of the BUF, Thomson was detained under Defence Regulation 18B in May 1940 and interned for much of the Second World War. He spent his entire jail spell in Brixton Prison, rather than the generally more favourable prison camp on the Isle of Man, until his release in 1944. Thomson reacted badly to his spell in detention and suffered a Nervous breakdown whilst incarcerated.