The Militant Christian Patriots (MCP) were a short-lived but influential anti-Semitic organisation active in the United Kingdom immediately prior to the Second World War. It played a central role in the ultimately unsuccessful attempts to keep the UK out of any European war.
The formation of the MCP has been disputed by historians. According to G.C. Webber the group was set up in 1928 by Lieutenant-Colonel Arthur H. Lane, who had previously been prominent in the Britons. [1] In contrast Hilary Blume sets its formation date as September 1935, and claims that it was established by Miss M.I. Nutt MacKenzie. [2] Barberis, McHugh and Tyldesley give its formation date as 1938, claiming it emerged soon after the Munich crisis. [3] Robert Benewick, writing in 1969, placed the group's formation as late as 1939. [4] Subsequently published information makes this date unlikely however. [2]
Upon its formation its avowed aim was opposing Zionism. [4] Soon however the group announced its support for Adolf Hitler and they quickly established links with Nazi Germany. [4] They agitated widely in favour of appeasement, [2] and targeted Neville Chamberlain in an attempt to convince him to keep out of what they portrayed as a war desired by the Jews. [3] Publicly they emphasised their Christian identity and claimed to wish to introduce "militant Christianity" into all areas of British life. To this end they identified several opponents beyond the Jews whom they saw as endangering Christian Britain, including the League of Nations, occultism, psychoanalysis and the political Left in general, with particular emphasis on the Fabian Society and Political and Economic Planning. [2] It campaigned widely in support of the Nationalists during the Spanish Civil War, presenting it as a battle between Christian forces and the Antichrist. [5]
The group began publishing its own news organ, Free Press, in 1935 with vendors selling it in the streets, with a second journal, The Britisher, following in 1937. They were noted for their extensive publishing efforts. [2] A number of prominent activists on the far right held membership of the group or were close to it, including A. K. Chesterton, Cuthbert Reavely and Joseph Bannister, with William Joyce also having a brief association with the group. The MCP favoured conspiratorial anti-Semitism, claiming that both Bolshevism and international finance were controlled by the Jews as part of a conspiracy to take over the world. [2]
Such were the connections to the Germans that by the spring of 1939 the Secretary of the Defence Committee stated that the group had taken over as the main outlet for dissemination of Nazi propaganda in the UK. [4] This was corroborated by the Board of Deputies of British Jews. [6] However following the signing of the Hitler-Stalin pact the group, which was also strongly anti-communist, lost its enthusiasm for the Nazis. [4]
The group had a reasonably good relationship with the British Union of Fascists, the main fascist organisation in the UK and one that frequently had a fractious relationship with other actors on the far-right, and MCP material was on sale in the BUF bookshop in Canterbury. [7] It became close to the Nordic League and the two groups worked together in attempting to influence members of the government away from involvement in any action against Germany. [8] The group also worked closely with the National Citizens Union, an originally anti-socialist group that had moved increasingly to anti-Semitism during the 1930s. [9]
Richard Stokes, the Labour MP for Ipswich was a member of the group. [10]
The MCP affiliated to the Coordinating Committee, an umbrella group established by Archibald Maule Ramsay that also included the British Democratic Party, the National Citizens Union and the British Empire Union. This group proved short-lived however as the differences between the member groups led to its collapse. [11]
The fate of the MCP is unclear although it continued to exist after the outbreak of war, its publications appearing until April 1940. [2] However the group was not revived after the war.
Arnold Spencer Leese was a British fascist politician. Leese was initially prominent as a veterinary expert on camels. A virulent anti-Semite, he led his own fascist movement, the Imperial Fascist League, and was a prolific author and publisher of polemics both before and after the Second World War.
The Imperial Fascist League (IFL) was a British fascist political movement founded by Arnold Leese in 1929 after he broke away from the British Fascists. It included a blackshirted paramilitary arm called the Fascists Legion, modelled after the Italian Fascists. The group espoused antisemitism and the dominance of the 'Aryan race' in a 'Racial Fascist Corporate State', especially after Leese met Nazi Party propagandist Julius Streicher, the virulently racist publisher of Der Stürmer; the group later indirectly received funding from the Nazis. Although it had only between 150 and 500 members at maximum, its public profile was higher than its membership numbers would indicate.
The National Fascisti (NF), renamed British National Fascists (BNF) in July 1926, were a splinter group from the British Fascisti formed in 1924. In the early days of the British Fascisti the movement lacked any real policy or direction and so this group split away with the intention of pursuing a more definite path towards a fascist state. The group had 60 members at its creation, and around 500 at its height.
The National Socialist League (NSL) was a short-lived Nazi political movement in the United Kingdom immediately prior to the Second World War.
Richard Rapier Stokes, was a British soldier and Labour politician who served briefly as Lord Privy Seal in 1951.
The Nordic League (NL) was a far-right organisation in the United Kingdom from 1935 to 1939 that sought to serve as a co-ordinating body for the various extremist movements whilst also seeking to promote Nazism. The League was a private organisation that did not organise any public events.
Rotha Beryl Lintorn Lintorn-Orman was a British political activist and World War I veteran who founded the British Fascisti, the first avowedly fascist movement to appear in British politics.
Alexander Raven Thomson, usually referred to as Raven, was a Scottish politician and philosopher. He joined the British Union of Fascists in 1933 and remained a follower of Oswald Mosley for the rest of his life. Thomson was considered to be the party's chief ideologue and has been described as the "Alfred Rosenberg of British fascism".
The Britons was an English anti-Semitic and anti-immigration organisation founded in July 1919 by Henry Hamilton Beamish and John Henry Clarke. The organisation published pamphlets and propaganda under the names Judaic Publishing Co. and later The Britons, and (The) Britons Publishing Society. These entities mainly engaged in disseminating antisemitic literature and rhetoric in the United Kingdom. The organisation was on the forefront of British Fascists. Imprints under the first label exist for 1920, 1921, and 1922.
The British People's Party (BPP) was a British far-right political party founded in 1939 and led by ex-British Union of Fascists (BUF) member and Labour Party Member of Parliament John Beckett.
The British Brothers' League (BBL) was a British anti-immigration, extraparliamentary, pressure group, the "largest and best organised" of its time. Described as proto-fascist, the group attempted to organise along paramilitary lines.
Henry Hamilton Beamish was a leading British antisemitic journalist and the founder of The Britons in 1919, the first organisation set up in Britain for the express purpose of diffusing antisemitic propaganda. After a conviction for libel the same year, Beamish fled Britain and began a career of touring speaker, travelling to Germany, Canada, the United States or Japan in order to promote antisemitic and fascist causes. In 1923, he spoke at one of Adolf Hitler's meetings in Munich, and met Julius Streicher in Nuremberg in 1937. Beamish settled in Southern Rhodesia in 1938, where he served as an independent member of the Southern Rhodesian Legislative Assembly between 1938 and 1940. During the Second World War, he was interned for three years due to his pro-Nazi sentiments. Upon his release, Beamish returned to England and died in March 1948, aged 74.
Robert Forgan was a British politician who was a close associate of Oswald Mosley.
Robert Byron Drury Blakeney, generally known as R. B. D. Blakeney, was a British Army officer and fascist politician. After a career with the Royal Engineers, Blakeney went on to serve as President of the British Fascists.
Lieutenant-Colonel Graham Seton Hutchison was a British First World War army officer, military theorist, author of both adventure novels and non-fiction works and fascist activist. Seton Hutchison became a celebrated figure in military circles for his tactical innovations during the First World War but would later become associated with a series of fringe fascist movements which failed to capture much support even by the standards of the far right in Britain in the interbellum period. He made a contribution to First World War fiction with his espionage novel, The W Plan.
The British League of Ex-Servicemen and Women (BLESMAW) was a British ex-service organisation that became associated with far-right politics both during and after the Second World War.
British fascism is the form of fascism which is promoted by some political parties and movements in the United Kingdom. It is based on British ultranationalism and imperialism and had aspects of Italian fascism and Nazism both before and after World War II.
Neil Lanfear Maclean Francis Hawkins was a British writer and politician who was a leading proponent of British fascism in the United Kingdom both before and after the Second World War. He played a leading role in the British Union of Fascists and controlled the organisational structure of the movement.
The British Fascists was the first political organisation in the United Kingdom to claim the label of fascism, formed in 1923. The group had lacked much ideological unity apart from anti-socialism for most of its existence, and was strongly associated with British conservatism. William Joyce, Neil Francis Hawkins, Maxwell Knight and Arnold Leese were amongst those to have passed through the movement as members and activists.