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Failed Führers A History
of Britain's Extreme Right
Graham Macklin
Routledge Studies in Fascism and the Far Right London:Routledge, 2020 Paperback. xxi+580 pages. ISBN 978-0415627306. £25
Reviewed by David
Renton Lincoln's Inn Fields, London
Let me begin by acknowledging that I know
the author. Although I have not spoken to Graham Macklin for more than a
decade, we were part of a cohort of PhD students at the University of Sheffield
in the late 1990s, where the senior members of the department included such
distinguished historians of fascism as Ian Kershaw, Colin Holmes and Richard
Thurlow. Macklin is also the co-editor of a book series ‘Routledge Studies in
Fascism and the Far Right’, in which his study appears and for which I have
written. In the account that follows, I have tried to view his book
objectively, while also acknowledging that it is an important and original
work. Failed Führers is a collective biography of the
British far right told through studies of six leading fascists – Arnold Leese,
Oswald Mosley, A.K. Chesterton, Colin Jordan, John Tyndall and Nick Griffin. They
led the Imperial Fascist League, the British Union of Fascists, the National
Front, the British Movement, and the British National Party, or – in effect –
every significant fascist party in British history between 1930 and 2010. The book is nearly 600 pages long, single-spaced,
and on pages slightly larger than the normal Routledge house style. Undoubtedly
it is the longest book to have been written on the history of the British far
right. Moreover, almost all the references are not to other published books but
to Macklin’s own research, to articles in little-read fascist newspaper, to
unpublished correspondence and obscure memoirs. I am sure I am not the only
historian to have had, somewhere in the depths of my desk drawer, notes towards
a possible manuscript telling the story of British fascism from its origin to
recent times. The existence of Macklin’s book makes it pointless to think of ever
publishing that work. In the remainder of this review, I
will set out some brief thoughts as to what book could still be written, after
Macklin’s. If the result appears critical, those criticisms are mixed with a
heady dose of admiration. Macklin has written the definitive institutional
history of the British far right. More leaders will have to come and go before
it would be possible to attempt a similar project. It is worth asking if the
concentration on individuals produces the quality of explanation that our normal,
day to day, focus on political leadership might cause a reader to expect? The best documented period in the
history of the British far right is the story of Oswald Mosley and his British
Union of Fascists between 1932, when that party was founded, and 1940, when its
members were detained by the wartime government under Defence Regulation 18B. That story is well-known, it has
been the subject of memoirs (from Mosley himself, his son Nicholas, and a
number of his followers), political histories, studies in the history of ideas,
and several works of fiction. There was even a 1998 television series dedicated
to this period of Mosley’s life. At one time, it seemed that the
origins of the popular fascination with this moment lay in the fact that for
all Mosley’s undoubted advantages, his wealth, his celebrity as an aristocrat
and career politician, he failed. Historians studied Mosley to prove the
essential decency and good judgment of the British people, and to show that he
was always doomed to defeat. More recently, the importance of the story has
seemed to reside rather in how close he came. We live in a time of monsters,
and we know how easily those of 80 years ago might return. How much do we learn about the
British Union of Fascists by seeing these events at, as a novelist might put
it, in the “close third person”? Macklin shows the dependence of Mosley on the
style of Italian fascism and of his party on foreign donations. The BUF’s
membership peaked at 50,000 in summer 1934. Macklin argues that during this
period every penny in the party’s bank accounts was of Italian origin. In Macklin’s account Mosley was
arguing for an idea which had been formulated in other countries, and which he
was copying. Unlike many in his party, Mosley was a fascist who became an
antisemite, and not the other way around. Macklin quotes the views of the
unfortunate MI5 officer who was assigned to read through the complete run of
the BUF paper, Action, “It is difficult to believe when reading these
back numbers … that one is reading a British newspaper and not some organ of
the German press”. For all the detail of Macklin’s
account I am not persuaded that he adds any depth to our understanding of
Mosley’s success. It seems to me rather that if anyone wanted to attempt that
task, they could achieve it only by writing away from the BUF – by asking what
needs Mosley met in the hearts of his supporters. For history groans with the
names of individuals who had fantasies about their own brilliance, their own
entitlement to lead. In so far as Mosley succeeded, why did he? And why then? Part of the answer, I suspect, would
need to come by drawing the connections between the likes of the Dorset members
of the BUF, a group of gentleman-farmers working on soils which seemed to them
exhausted, and the Nelson fascists, active in an industrial town where most
people were workers, and the dominant values were those of social democracy.
The leader, I conclude from Macklin’s account, had little knowledge in the
complexities of his support, or interest in who was attracted to him. He combined
feelings of personal entitlement with the great good fortune of a favourable moment. While Failed Führers is a
book of such enormity that it will undoubtedly be given to students as the new
standard work of British fascism, and the first book to read on any fascism
course, there are nevertheless still gaps in its account. Anti-fascism is passed at blurring
speed. We are told that there were clashes at Olympia and Cable Street, but not
what was at stake for the BUF in preparing for them. We learn rather more about
how the fascists attempted to deal with the aftermath of these clashes. Every party has an antagonist: for
most groups it is simply the indifference of the British public who insists on
voting for someone else. Fascism, almost uniquely in British history, has faced
the problem that its largest events were liable to infiltration, that its
opponents insisted it had no legitimate right to organise. That its members
fought – and were fought. In leaving that story out, I do not believe that
Macklin’s is accurate even to his leader’s eye view of the past. A second key section addresses the
period between 1974 and 1979 when the National Front showed every sign of
becoming a street force of the same size as their counterparts 40 years before.
A membership of nearly 20,000 people did better in elections even than the BUF,
with John Tyndall’s NF approaching or even overtaking the votes won by their
immediate rival, Britain’s third main party, the Liberals. Tyndall had, by this stage of his
career, played a leading role in British fascist groups for more than a decade.
All that had changed was the size of his audience, from a few hundred people in
the early 1960s, to tens of thousands a decade on. Macklin’s Tyndall never stops or
waits, never reflects. He never tells himself to enjoy the moment. He appears
to show no interest in why the Front had suddenly grown, other than to see this
period of success as the necessary corollary of (what he considered was) his
obvious qualities as a leader and the self-evident rightness of his ideas. Tyndall’s leadership becomes a
matter of rivalries. Macklin tells us, in detail, what Tyndall thought of those
who left the Front prematurely in 1976. We are allowed no real insight into
events three years later, the catastrophe of the 1979 general election results,
which forced Tyndall back to the political margins. To explain the success of the Front,
a historian would need to explain where this group fitted within a certain
moment of history, the decline of the British empire, the fascination with the
losing side in the World War, the cultural processes which suddenly made
fascism attractive to a younger generation. Macklin, stood by the leader’s
side, is too close to see these dynamics clearly. And yet, at the same time, he
is not close enough to acquire the advantages of his viewpoint, the immediate
insight into the opinions of the leader as his project falls apart. Macklin’s treatment of the BNP
between about 2005 and 2010 is perhaps the strongest section of the book. Here,
he feels entitled to place fascist success with a context of wider processes:
the decay of Tony Blair’s authority, the obsession of both our main parties
with immigration. Even protest comes (almost) back in, through a discussion of the
Question Time broadcast which sunk Griffin’s credibility with any larger audience.
Even here, we are stuck in the same space – too close to the leader to see
everything, and yet not quite close enough. This book is a superb piece of research.
No-one will ever surpass the detail with which Macklin explores these figures
in British history. But as for fascism, as a movement, and its opponents, there
is more to be said about them.
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