Victor Cecil Burgess was a British fascist who was one of the principal figures in the British League of Ex-Servicemen and Women (BLESMAW).
After the outbreak of the Second World War, Burgess was briefly detained by the British government under the newly-introduced Defence Regulation 18B. [1]
In 1942, Burgess set up a distribution centre for anti-Semitic literature for the BUF in Edgware, Middlesex. According to Graham Macklin, Burgess was lucky to escape prosecution for seditious libel. [2]
By 1944, Burgess, along with Jeffrey Hamm, had taken control of the BLESMAW. The organisation had been founded as an alternative to the Royal British Legion in 1937 and held its first meeting in Hyde Park on 4 November 1944. It promoted itself as a fascist organisation that endorsed racial purity and "Britain for the British" and inspired a hostile reaction from the crowd. [3] Under Hamm and Burgess, the group became active in East London, where it was involved in street violence. [4] Burgess was ousted from the group by 1946, however, as Hamm viewed him as a rival for the leadership.
Burgess then linked up with Alexander Raven Thomson in his group the Union of British Freedom, a network designed to co-ordinate the activities of several small regional discussion groups that were sympathetic to Mosley. [5]
Burgess was well regarded by other Mosleyites in the immediate postwar period for his habit of delivering anti-Semitic speeches on Friday nights at Hampstead Heath although many of those in attendance were Jewish. During one such speech, he was allegedly attacked with a razor by members of the 43 Group. [6] However, his olive skin also led to rumours that he was of Romani descent. [6] Another rumour was that his wife, Olive, had been a communist, which was true, as she had served as a member of the Communist Party of Great Britain's Hendon branch. [7]
As a sideline, Burgess imported pornographic magazines from the United States, a source of mirth for some of his fellow members, but that was ultimately ended when one of his political colleagues reported Burgess to the police for what he considered an immoral practice. [8]
Joining the Union Movement (UM) upon its formation, he became head of the influential Kensington branch and was initially required to work alongside Hamm at the party's headquarters. However, tensions between the two men were such that Mosley was eventually forced to end the arrangement and to send Hamm to Manchester to take charge of the northern section of the party. [9]
In 1949, Burgess stood as a local councillor in Kensington South, London. He received 2.5% of the vote and was not elected.[ citation needed ]
The UM went into decline after Mosley's decision to move to Ireland in 1951. In an attempt to arrest that trend, Burgess and his associate Derek Lesley-Jones set up the Special Propaganda Service, a group of 18 activists whose twin roles were to travel the country supplying local branches with propaganda material as well as to infiltrate Communist Party events and to cause disturbances. However, internal divisions within the UM saw that initiative abandoned, which made Burgess resign from the UM in February 1953. [10]
Sir Oswald Ernald Mosley, 6th Baronet, was a British politician who rose to fame during the 1920s and 1930s when, having become disillusioned with mainstream politics, he turned to fascism. Mosley was the son of a baronet. He was a member of parliament and later founded and led the British Union of Fascists (BUF).
The British Union of Fascists (BUF) was a British fascist political party formed in 1932 by Oswald Mosley. Mosley changed its name to the British Union of Fascists and National Socialists in 1936 and, in 1937, to the British Union. In 1939, following the start of the Second World War, the party was proscribed by the British government and in 1940 it was disbanded.
Arthur Kenneth Chesterton was a British journalist and political activist. From 1933 to 1938, he was a member of the British Union of Fascists (BUF). Disillusioned with Oswald Mosley, he left the BUF in 1938. Chesterton established the League of Empire Loyalists in 1954, which merged with a short-lived British National Party in 1967 to become the National Front. He founded and edited the magazine Candour in 1954 as the successor of Truth, of which he had been co-editor.
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.
John Warburton Beckett was a British politician who was a Labour Party MP from 1924 to 1931. During the 1930s, he joined the fascist movement, first in the British Union of Fascists and later as a founder of the National Socialist League and British People's Party. During World War II, he was interned in Britain.
Edward Jeffrey Hamm was a leading British fascist and supporter of Oswald Mosley. Although a minor figure in Mosley's prewar British Union of Fascists, Hamm became a leading figure after the Second World War and eventually succeeded as leader of the Union Movement after Mosley's retirement.
Thomas P. Moran was a leading member of the British Union of Fascists and a close associate of Oswald Mosley. Initially a miner, Moran later became a qualified engineer. He joined the Royal Air Force at 17 and later served in the Royal Naval Reserve as an engine room artificer.
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".
Europe a Nation was a policy developed by the British fascist politician Oswald Mosley as the cornerstone of his Union Movement. It called for the integration of Europe into a single political entity. Although the idea failed to gain widespread support for the Union Movement, it proved highly influential on European far-right thought.
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 English National Association (ENA) was a political group active in the United Kingdom during the Second World War. It was accused of having fascist sympathies.
Jorian Edward Forwood Jenks was an English farmer, environmentalism pioneer and fascist. He has been described as "one of the most dominant figures in the development of the organic movement".
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.
The Union Movement (UM) was a far-right political party founded in the United Kingdom by Oswald Mosley. Before the Second World War, Mosley's British Union of Fascists (BUF) had wanted to concentrate trade within the British Empire, but the Union Movement attempted to stress the importance of developing a European nationalism, rather than a narrower country-based nationalism. That has caused the UM to be characterised as an attempt by Mosley to start again in his political life by embracing more democratic and international policies than those with which he had previously been associated. The UM has been described as post-fascist by former members such as Robert Edwards, the founder of the pro-Mosley European Action, a British pressure group and monthly newspaper.
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.
Robert Row (1915–1999) was an English fascist from Lancaster, a member of Oswald Mosley's British Union of Fascists (BUF) who was detained by the British government under Defence Regulation 18B during the Second World War. After the war, he wrote and edited British fascist publications and remained a believer in Mosley until his death.
John Warburton was an English fascist and press photographer. He was an assistant district leader for the Clapham branch of Sir Oswald Mosley's British Union of Fascists (BUF) before the Second World War, and afterwards was a key member of the Union Movement, the founder editor of Comrade, and the senior Council member of Friends of Oswald Mosley.
Charles Frederick Watts was a member of the British Union of Fascists who was interned during the Second World War.
The Battle of Carfax (1936) was a violent skirmish in the city of Oxford between the British Union of Fascists (BUF) and local anti-fascists, trade unionists, and supporters of the Labour Party and the Communist Party of Great Britain. The battle took place inside Oxford's Carfax Assembly Rooms, a once popular meeting hall owned by Oxford City Council which was used for public events and located on Cornmarket Street.