Francis Beckett

Britain can be as prone to fascism as any other nation

There’s nothing about the British psyche that guards against extremism, but our demagogues have been too busy fighting each other to make much impact

Oswald Mosley holds forth. Credit: Getty Images

It’s easy to dismiss the fascistic ideologues who populate Graham Macklin’s book as reactionary cranks of no significance. It’s also a mistake. Fascists have edged uncomfortably close to the mainstream of British politics ever since the British Union of Fascists was founded in 1932 by Oswald Mosley, who two years earlier had been a government minister.

In 2009, two British National Party candidates were elected to the European Parliament. The seats were lost in 2014 because the BNP votes transferred en masse to Ukip. If you doubt that the spirit of the BNP infused Ukip, you have only to look at what has happened to it since Nigel Farage decamped.

Macklin’s lucid and informative book shows that there has always been a cross-fertilisation between the fascist fringe and the mainstream. The League of Empire Loyalists, a neo-fascist group set up in the early 1950s, was close to the right wing of the Conservative party and competed for members with the Monday Club. As Conservative Central Office wrote to one of its MPs:

It is a fact that many sincere Conservatives are members of the LEL because of their belief in Empire. I am quite sure that the Conservative members of the League will not allow any disagreement between the League and our Organisation to interfere with their efforts to return Conservative Members of Parliament. We have not questioned the League’s sincerity and we believe that its members will adhere to its objects.

‘I’m worried that I bore people.’

Neo-fascist rhetoric on Israel has uncomfortable echoes in some far left circles. The now defunct National Front repackaged anti-Semitism as anti-Zionism, and promised to ‘assist the Palestinians in their struggle’. This so muddied the waters that by the time of the 2019 general election, no one was able to distinguish between anti-Semitism and legitimate criticism of the Israeli government.

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