From 'Hurrah for the Blackshirts' to 'Maggie's Militant Tendency'
"Herr Chancellor, on behalf of the British Government I congratulate you on crushing communism in Germany and standing as a bulwark against Russia" (1a)
- Lord Halifax then British Deputy Prime Minister (later Foreign Secretary) addressing Adolf Hitler, November 1937.
King Edward the 8th/Duke of Windsor shares a joke
with Hitler
The first avowedly fascist organisation in Britain was the 'British Fascisti' (later just plain old 'British Fascists') formed in 1923. Largely comprised of military officers it was little more than a strong arm squad for the Conservative Party, stewarding Conservative meetings and calling for votes for the Conservative Party. One of their few policies was, as a means of reducing unemployment, a demand for a reduction in income tax so that rich people could hire more servants. During the General Strike of 1926 they served as scabs, through this they acquired a martyr when one of their members scabbing on the railways lent too far out a window and was decapitated by a bridge. They also worked as agents for Special Branch and M.I.5. However in 1920's Britain admiration for Fascism mostly meant admiration for the Italian Government rather than agitating for Fascism in Britain.
As Sir Winston Churchill put it:
"If I had been an Italian, I am sure that I should have been wholeheartedly with you [Mussolini] from start to finish in your triumphant struggle against the bestial appetites and passions of Leninism" (Churchill's misnomer for working class resistance)
"But in England we have not had to fight this danger in the same deadly form. We have our way of doing things"(1)
According to historian A.J.P. Taylor:
"Every politician extolled the virtues of democracy, especially at the expense of Soviet Russia. Despite this rhetoric, MacDonald wrote friendly personal letters to the Fascist dictator Mussolini; Austen Chamberlain exchanged photographs with him and joined him in family holidays; Churchill sang his praises in newspaper articles" (2)
http://struggle.ws/freeearth/fe1_britain.html
EdwardVIII Letter of abdication. A good man and one we lost
