Thinking Imperially: The British Fascisti and the Politics of Empire, 1923–35

Abstract

Abstract This article sets out to examine what fascism actually meant to its earliest British adherents focusing on Britain’s first self-proclaimed fascist group, the British Fascisti (BF). Drawing on material from the BF’s newspapers, the popular press, and archival sources, it argues that its members conceived of British fascism as an imperial solution to a crisis imagined in imperial terms. They envisioned British fascism in practice as the metropolitan extension of repressive imperial violence—that is, the ability to take whatever steps deemed necessary to safeguard the law, order, and the status quo, whether on the streets of Britain or those of the Punjab. In this sense, the article maintains, the BF formed part of a broader British political tradition, one that saw the ‘ethos’ of Empire as a means of averting Britain’s decline. It begins by introducing the BF and their ideology, moving to a discussion of how the Jewish-Bolshevik plot against the British Empire imagined by BF members reflected the colonial experiences of their leading personnel. It then interrogates the BF’s proposed antidote to this anti-imperial conspiracy. By emulating the qualities and behaviour of Britain’s imperial heroes and living an ‘imperial’ way of life, they hoped to restore Britain to greatness. It concludes with a call for further research into the overlapping histories of British fascism and the British Empire.