Philip Coupland

Fascism, Anti-Fascism, and Britain in the 1940s by Dave Renton. Basingstoke and London, Macmillan, 2000. ix, 203 pp. $65.00 (cloth).

Whilst this topic has been covered before, this is the first detailed, book-length study of the attempts of fascism in general, and Sir Oswald Mosley’s Union Movement in particular, to relaunch themselves in Britain after 1945.

Based on its author’s doctoral thesis, Fascism, Anti-Fascism, and Britain in the 1940s is in four sections, the first of which promises to tell ‘what actually happened’ in the history of British fascism, 1918–1951 - presumably as a corrective to earlier efforts. Indeed Renton sharply censures those writers whose work has been ‘distorted’ by their contact with surviving blackshirts (9) and, instead of drawing critically on all sources, he only interviews antifascists. Regarding this critique of other historians, it must be hoped that readers seek out the works in question and make up their own mind. Those readers would also do well to consult one of the earlier histories of British fascism rather than rely exclusively on the account here: at points it is too compressed to provide a sufficiently detailed narrative and too single-minded to critically examine its own interpretations.

The following chapter turns to post-war fascism, stressing the principle that fascism should be understood in terms of its ‘practice’ rather than its ‘theory’. Thus, unlike some histories which may have overemphasised the ideas of the fascist leadership, Renton pays greater attention to the actions of the rank-and-file. Fascism emerges as a force for violence, driven by elitism, racism, antisemitism, and hatred of socialism and the working class. However, whilst these are central parts of the story, do they reflect the full, more ambiguous, reality of fascist ideas, motivations, and practice?

Reflecting Marxist assumptions about fascism, Renton also analyses the class-origin of 1940s fascism. Unfortunately, the evidence linking the ‘capitalist class’ to post-war fascism is so scanty as to be unworthy of the space devoted to it. Moving on to argue that post-war fascism was predominantly ‘middle class’, he has to turn to studies of the pre-war British Union of Fascists (BUF) for anything approaching a substantive survey, but fails to discuss Thomas Linehan’s East London for Mosley (1996), which does not support this thesis. However, given that 1940s fascism was, as Renton writes, ‘[e]ven where it was strongest … pitifully weak’ (70), one wonders whether the participation of an estimated 6-7,000 persons in an extreme and eccentric politics might be better understood in terms other than class?

This admission of the weakness of fascism is also at odds with the argument elsewhere in the book that it was ‘large … and popular’ and ‘very powerful, confident, and threatening’ (vii, 36). This apparent contradiction is of more than pedantic concern inasmuch that interpretation of the relative threat offered by fascism is crucial to any assessment of the responses of anti-fascists and the state to it.

It is with these subjects that the two final chapters deal, the first devoted to antifascists in the labour movement and Jewish defence organisations. Approval here goes to those who were prepared to use all means against fascism, including offensive force, to, as one antifascist is quoted as saying, ‘out-violence the fascists’ (94). Whilst a liberal democratic state cannot legitimately step outside of the rule of law in this way, in the final chapter the efforts of the police to preserve order at fascist meetings becomes intervention ‘on the side of the fascists’ (104). Whereas a careful consideration of the influence of, for instance, antisemitism on law enforcement might have been  made here, possible police bias is traced ultimately to the willingness of the state under a Labour government to ‘work with or tolerate fascism’ (128). The positive evidence for this is meagre but much more important is a failure to consider the other anti-fascist tradition: the long-established practice of gathering intelligence, seeking legal action and legislation where essential, whilst denying fascism the publicity created by violent incidents and high-profile prosecutions. Given that this approach had successfully ‘smothered’ the BUF in the 1930s, Renton offers no convincing reason why the even more feeble fascism of the 1940s demanded more attention from the overstretched Attlee government.

As the conclusion admits, fascism may have been ‘destined’ (144) to fail in any case. In times of relative stability, the public was offered a politics which, notorious in the 1930s, was now associated with a hated enemy and appalling atrocities. The emergency in Palestine made fascist antisemitism attractive for a few but then British withdrawal denied even that appeal. Renton’s argument that the antifascists ensured that fascism was ‘smashed’ (144) is not without validity – they ensured that it remained associated with disorder. However, whether to step outside of the law and match violence with violence was necessary or desirable is more questionable. Furthermore, although not mentioned here, Union Movement was not destroyed but remained on the political fringe through the 1950s and 60s. 

Whilst Fascism, Anti-Fascism, and Britain in the 1940s demonstrates extensive research, it may leave readers pondering the differing approaches to argumentation and evidence of polemic and history, and where the boundary between those two modes of discourse lies.

University of Glasgow                                                                     Philip M. Coupland

Originally published in The Canadian Journal of History, August 2002, Vol. 37 No. 2, p391