ABSTRACT
The roots of Britain’s anti-fascist tradition can be traced back to 7 October 1923, when Communists disrupted the inaugural meeting of the British Fascisti (BF). This rally of Britain’s first fascist organisation, attended by some 500 people, ended in ‘pandemonium’. Two further meetings, both held in November 1923 in London’s Hammersmith, were also disrupted.1 The very birth of British fascism had encountered opposition – this before the hostility that was directed towards Oswald Mosley’s British Union of Fascists (BUF) in the 1930s. Until recently, antagonism towards the BUF’s precursors had passed historians by,2 given that Britain’s early fascist organisations had been written off as ‘irrelevancies’, unimportant in both ideological and organisational terms. Even though there were no mass anti-fascist mobilisations on the scale of those that would take place in the 1930s, the antecedents of this later mass opposition originate in the previous decade. The formation of the British Fascisti in May 1923 (acknowledged by the Daily
Herald on 30 August 1923) gave rise to some concern that British fascists might reproduce the violence of their Italian counterparts. Italian Fascism had started out as a tiny movement in 1919 (the BF had just 15 adherents at the time of the Herald’s report), but had grown exponentially in a short space of time, facilitated by the anti-communism of the Italian political establishment. By early 1924 the BF had expanded to some 2,000 members (many of whom had dual membership with the Conservative Party). By the time the BF held a national rally in Trafalgar Square in late 1924, it could muster 1,800 activists in central London, with the security services guesstimating a total strength of around 30,0003 (helped no doubt by the absence of any membership or mandatory subscription fee). Threateningly, the BF’s ‘enrolment oath’ carried the open-ended pledge ‘to render every service in my power to the British Fascisti in their struggle against all treacherous and revolutionary movements
now working for the destruction of the Throne and the Empire’.4 For those left-wing militants disrupting the earliest meetings of the BF, the founding of an Italian-style fascist organisation (the imitative name ‘Fascisti’ making the link with Mussolini’s movement explicit) had to be resisted, for a more mature form of fascismo might be turned loose on British workers if left unchecked. However, since mainstream opinion paid modest attention to Italian Fascism, the
founding of a domestic equivalent was largely ignored. Italy was a minor ‘Mediterranean land’ after all, and Fascism came across as specifically and stereotypically Italian (‘theatrical’ and ‘dramatic’). Although inclined towards lawless brutality, a point made repeatedly by the Rome correspondent of the Daily Herald and by Guglielmo Salvadori in the New Statesman, Fascism was praised for saving Italy from the anarchy of the left. Conservative opinion applauded Mussolini for restoring ‘order’ and this evaluation was even echoed in the Labour press, which had acclaimed Italian Fascism for a ‘bloodless revolution’. Despite Italian Fascism’s venomous assault on the left, Labour declared that ‘we must welcome Fascism halfway’ and concluded that left-wing militancy had brought about Italian Fascism by engendering disorder and political confusion.5 Labour was keen to stress democratic, legalistic credentials and was anxious to dissociate itself from the ‘irresponsible’ revolutionary agitation of ‘continental’ socialism. The effect was that initial opposition to the first growths of domestic fascism did not attract widespread interest or enthusiasm. Nonetheless, left-wing militants alive to a potential fascist threat in Britain
quickly saw the need for specific anti-fascist organisations (possibly a response to the Fascisti gaining the upper hand in initial confrontations).6 One early anti-fascist initiative came in January 1924 when a defensive ‘anti-fascisti’ organisation known as the People’s Defence Force (PDF) was launched. From the 1917 Club in Soho, London, the PDF issued a statement on 26 January 1924. This maintained that the ‘existence of a militant body calling itself the British Fascisti obviously inspired by the example of the Italian reactionaries […] calls for a corresponding force pledged to resist any interference with the due operation of the constitution’. The PDF cast itself as a non-aggressive, legalistic organisation and even commended the police as a model to all its members. Declaring itself formally independent but aligned to the ‘workers’ movement’, it pledged to ‘keep a watchful eye on the activities of the Fascisti’ and ‘resist any attempt to break up meetings’.7 Special Branch reported that it was not known whether this defence group was officially connected with the Communist movement although key personnel appeared to be closely linked. One of the organisers, H. Martin, was Secretary of the London District Council of the National Unemployed Workers’ Committee.8 Another, H. Johnstone, was identified as the probable organiser of the West London branch of the Communist Party of Great Britain (CPGB).9
