ABSTRACT
This move, approximately a year after leaving Brixton gaol, may also be related to the lifting of restrictions imposed at the time of Jenks’ release. Unlike other released fascists, he was not on the ‘suspect lists’ of those to be arrested in the case of a German invasion, although MI5 continued to monitor him, with his post intercepted until at least June 1946.4
Montague Fordham
At the end of 1942, Jenks also set out on what would become an important part of his activism after the BUF. On Christmas Eve, he told Saunders that he had been offered ‘a chance of doing some speaking and propaganda work’ for the Rural Reconstruction Association.5 The Association was the creation of the charismatic Montague Fordham (1864-1948), who, at 78 years of age, wished to hand over the active work to another. Fordham was one of the three men that Jenks later named as having done most to shape his outlook, whom he described as ‘an authority on rural history and […] that rare bird, an original thinker who could readily impart his ideas to others’.6
