British fascism
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.
Historical examples of fascist organisations in Britain include the British Fascists, the British National Fascists, the Imperial Fascist League, the British Union of Fascists, the British League of Ex-Servicemen and Women, the National Socialist League, The Link, the British People's Party and the Union Movement. More recent examples of British fascist groups include the British Movement, the National Front, the British National Party, Britain First, National Action, and the Sonnenkrieg Division. Parties inspired by British fascist movements include the New Zealand National Front and the Australian Protectionist Party.
Ideology
Origins
British fascism, like other fascisms, lacks a common "intellectual genealogy"; it developed its ideas from various sources, British and foreign. British fascism acknowledges the inspiration and legacy of Italian fascism and Nazism but it also states that it is not a mere application of a "foreign" ideology, alleging roots within British traditions. Early British fascism, as seen in the British Fascists, initially had "little evidence of fascism in its ideology". It evolved its ideals in response to conservative influences on the domestic scene and the post-war anti-labour movement. From Italian fascism it took inspiration of strong leadership and strong opposition to communism.Later British fascism, as seen in the British Union of Fascists, while inspired by, for example, Italian fascism's ideas on the Corporate State, claimed both its economic and political agenda intend to embody that of Tudor England. It claimed that its advocacy of a centralised national authoritarian state was based upon the Tudor state's hostility to party factions and to self-interested sectional interests, and upon the Tudor goal of national integration through a centralised authoritarian state. Supporters saw the Tudor state as a prototype fascist state. In 1935 A. L. Glasfurd, a member of the British Union of Fascists, praised Henry VII's subjugation of "lawless barons who had brought about the Wars of the Roses"; he also praised the "Tudor dictatorship" for introducing national policies and restrictions on the export of English capital by self-serving private speculators. Glasfurd also praised the Tudor state for instituting a planned economy that he claimed was a predecessor of the "scientific" national economic planning of fascism.
British fascism also claimed the legacy of Oliver Cromwell, who dominated the British Isles in the 1650s; Oswald Mosley claimed that Cromwell brought about "the first fascist age in England". English political theorist Thomas Hobbes in his work Leviathan systematised the ideology of absolutism that advocated an all-powerful absolute monarchy to maintain order within a state. Hobbes' theory of absolutism became highly influential in fascist theory. British fascists claimed that its corporatist economic policy accords with England's historical medieval guild system, with its enlightened regulation of wages, prices and conditions of labour providing precedents for a British fascist corporatist economic system.
Specific policies could take ideas and inspiration from theorists and politicians of various stripes: for instance, as well as being informed by Italian and Nazi fascism, Mosley's economic policy took inspiration from Keynes and Roosevelt. Mosley is also seen as taking political and economic arguments from the Edwardian radical right and was influenced by Hegel and Nietzsche.
Tenets
There have been a number of British fascist groups, each with their own emphases; some less developed than others. Below are tenets shared by many of the groups, or those set out by the most established groups.Societal degeneration and renewal
Like others on the right, British fascists diagnose the nation as in decline and under threat. For the BUF, the fragmenting of the British Empire and the changes in gender roles following WWI were examples of the weaknesses of British society. The BUF and the Union Movement described the weaknesses they saw in misogynistic terms, equating them with femininity. The decline was blamed on liberalism and outside influences and propagandists.The fascist cure to this decline was renewal of the nation. Renewal for the BUF included the assertion of masculinity as virile, strong, hard and fortitudinous, and saw man as rightfully the authority. Under a Britain run by Mosley's fascists, girls would be educated up to the age of 15 so that they would be able to serve their families and the nation, and married women would be allowed to work but wouldn't need to because men, who are better suited to work, would receive higher wages so husbands would provide for their families. Mosley called for a 'return of seriousness and the restoration of social values' to curb homosexuality.
Nationalism and racialism
The British Union of Fascists sought to unify the British nation in a number of ways. The division between workers and employers, for instance, would be resolved, they argued, by the "machinery of government" providing an "equitable distribution of the proceeds of industry" to those involved.The BUF also sought to bridge the divide between Protestant and Catholic Britons, and in particular it sought to appeal to Catholic Irish living in Britain. The BUF declared support for complete religious toleration. BUF Leader Sir Oswald Mosley emphasised the "Irish Connection" and the BUF held both Protestant and Catholic religious branches. Mosley condemned the Liberal government of David Lloyd George for being responsible for allowing reprisals between Catholics and Protestants in Ireland. As a result of the BUF's conciliatory approach to Catholics, it gained a substantial support amongst Catholics, and several BUF leaders in Hull, Blackburn, and Bolton, were Catholics. Support by Catholic Irish in Stepney for the BUF increased after the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War that involved clerical traditionalist and fascist forces fighting against an anti-clerical government.
On racial issues, the various British fascist movements held different—although invariably racialist—policies. Mosley's BUF believed that culture created national and racial differences—a policy closer to the views on race by Italian fascism rather than German Nazism. Initially the BUF was not explicitly anti-Semitic. In April and May 1933, the BUF newspaper The Blackshirt wrote that antisemitism was not an inherent characteristic of fascism. Rather, BUF considered it to be attributable to the specific German circumstances. On the contrary, Jewish issue was unknown to the Italian fascism, which BUF considered as "perfect". The BUF's ideology was in fact based upon the views on race of Austrian Jewish sociologist Ludwig Gumplowicz and Scottish anthropologist Arthur Keith, who defined race formation as the result of dynamic historical and political processes established within the confines of the nation state and that the defining characteristics of a people were determined by the interaction of heredity, environment, culture, and evolution over a historical period of time. However, Mosley later prominently asserted anti-Semitism, invoking the theory of German philosopher Oswald Spengler, who described that Magian Jews and Faustian Europeans were bound to live in friction with each other. In contrast to the Nazis, however, Mosley's anti-Semitism was largely conspiratorial rather than racial, with Mosley often stating "he was against the Jews not for what they were, but for what they did". Arnold Leese's Imperial Fascist League, on the other hand, promoted pro-Nazi racial policy including anti-Semitism.
The British Union of Fascists differed from other fascists in viewing the evolution in neo-Lamarckian terms. Lamarckism viewed the adaptation in terms of the interaction between the mind and will of man and the environment, rather than in terms of random mutation and natural selection like Darwinism. Mosley and the BUF emphasized the willpower as the prime agent of the evolution. Therefore, he viewed the main changes in the history as being driven by the social and cultural factors rather than the physical. The adaptation, according to Mosley, was a response to the events and the will to transform the reality. Like German philosopher Oswald Spengler, Mosley viewed the race as a feature of culture, expression of its symbols and values. Mosley wrote that "biology begins again to teach that the wilful determination of the species to rise above the limitations of material environment is the dominating factor in evolution. … In fact every tendency in modern science assures us that in superb effort the human spirit can soar beyond the restraint of time and circumstance." Mosley synthetized the Nietzschean and Christian values. He believed that fascism was the will to power harnessed into the service of community. He wrote: "every Blackshirt is an individual cell of a collective Caesarism. The organised will of devoted masses, subject to a voluntary discipline and inspired by the passionate ideal of natural survival, replacing the will to power and a higher order of the individual superman". Mosley developed his thoughts from heroic vitalism and creative evolutionism. He believed that Europe was facing a historic crisis, and that it would have been overcome through a strong will, ushering Europe into the new order. Mosley argued that Spengler was mistaken in his cultural pessimism, instead claiming that fascism based on modern science could rejuvenate Western culture. He came to see fascism as a "mutiny against destiny", writing that "rise of the National Socialist and Fascist doctrine throughout Europe represents in historic determinism the supreme effort of modern man to challenge and overcome the human destiny which in every previous civilisation has ordained irretrievable downfall".
Mosley argued against immigration, adopting the motto "Britain for the British". However, he wrote in 1938 that he did not consider the German Nazi racial policy appropriate for Britain, because the Britain, unlike Germany, possessed an empire which consisted of many different races, and thus it would be inappropriate to adopt laws which would stigmatise any race within the empire. Mosley argued against race-mixing and considered the preservation of "British race" and its culture as important, however, he argued that the same approach would extend to other races as well. In particular, he criticized the imposition of the Western culture on other races of empire, such as Indians, writing: "Fascist teaches pride of race and racial culture. Under Fascism, Indian leaders will arise to carry forward their own traditions and culture within the framework of Empire and the modern world of science". Regarding Jews, Mosley told them: either adopt "Britain First" or leave.