Fascist national

Members of the National Fascists wore the same black shirts as the followers of Benito Mussolini , and also underwent military training, despite the fact that the level of military-political threat within the UK was low. Despite independence from the British fascists, the personal ideas of the National Fascists were quite commonplace: radical anti-communism was expressed as the desire to “crush the red and pink” ( English smash the reds and pinks ), and anti-Semitism was also characteristic.

The national fascists chose aggressive acts of disobedience by their methods of struggle: in 1925 they hijacked a truck with copies of the left-wing newspaper “Daily Herald” and smashed it. This caused a wide public outcry and resulted in a fight in Hyde Park with supporters of the Communist Party of Great Britain . The members of the group were actively engaged in boxing and fencing in order to demonstrate their militarism (they even specially sharpened their weapons in case of open military clashes). One of their leaders was a certain “Colonel Victor Barker” - in fact, it was a woman Valerie Arkell-Smith (even her nephew, who considered Arkell-Smith to be his uncle), who also became a secretary to the commander of the Rippone-Seymour group .

During the 1926 strike, the Nazis turned to the Prime Minister to offer their services as part of an organization to supply resources and help suppress the strike. The government demanded that the party leadership abandon their beliefs in exchange for accepting assistance, which the head of the British fascists Robert Blakeni and secretary Rippon-Seymour did not agree to. Individually, the Nazis joined the Special Police, which suppressed the speeches.

By December 1926, splits began in the ranks of the Nazis: Rippon-Seymour challenged Charles Ayrs to a duel, who accused Rippon-Seymour of misuse of finances and dictatorship. Seymour also had an unregistered firearm with which he threatened Airs. He in response called to the aid of his supporters from Kensington, who made public the fact of Seymour's illegal possession of weapons (formally it was registered at the aforementioned Valerie Arkell-Smith). The scandal that erupted led to the renaming of the movement as "British National Fascists", whose head remained Rippon-Seymour. Important figures soon began to leave the group: for example, Colonel Ralph Bingham left for the Resource Supply Organization. As a result, by the next year there was no trace of the movement, and it actually ceased to exist.

National fascists were not noted for anything significant, although they were the first to promote fascism as an original British ideology. With their help, personalities such as William Joyce and Arnold Liz began their careers.

• R. Benewick, Political Violence and Public Order, London: Allan Lane, 1969
• S. Dorril, Blackshirt: Sir Oswald Mosley & British Fascism, London: Penguin Books, 2007
• R. Griffiths, Fellow Travelers on the Right, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1983
• M. Pugh, Hurrah for the Blackshirts: Fascists and Fascism in Britain Between the Wars, Pimlico, 2006
• R. Thurlow, Fascism in Britain: A History, 1918-1985, Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1987