The Blackshirts in Northampton, 1933 –1940: Postscript.

 

Philip M. Coupland (drpmc66@ntlworld.com)

 

 

During the course of my research on the BUF in Northampton in the late 1990s I had the opportunity to draw on the full range of published and archival resources, as well as interviews with contemporary actors and witnesses and various informal sources. It can be said with some confidence that no stone was left unturned at that time. However, since publication in 2000, various new sources have become available, the most important being the release of material compiled by the Security Service (MI5). Among these are the files for Peter Farmer, the last Northampton District Leader (1939-1940). The contents of these files – covering the period from his arrest in 1940, through his release from internment in 1943, to the immediate post-war years – do not demand any major alterations of the account above but do add some significant detail. 

 

Peter Farmer

 

We learn, for example, a little more about the fortunes of fascism in wartime – or at least one Blackshirt’s representation of them. Writing to a supporter in April 1940 Farmer claimed to be ‘busy at headquarters’ and that ‘dozens of new members have been enrolled. I live over the shop now so we have it open all day.’[1] In line with this optimistic tone Farmer seemed to have been convinced that the BUF were on the brink of a breakthrough. To the same correspondent he wrote chillingly ‘One day the Jews who brought us into the war will have to pay and when I say pay I mean pay in more ways than one! At least after seven years struggle British Union approaches the day when we make the law. We are now engaged on our final campaign – a campaign which will undoubtedly bring us to power.’[2] Weeks after writing these words the BUF was instead smashed by the government’s security measures. 

 

 

 

Peter Farmer, Northampton BUF District Leader (1939-1940)

 

 

The banning of the organisation and the internment of many of its activists – including Farmer – did not crush the spirit of the activists. Farmer continued to express belief in the coming victory of fascism in Britain, albeit through defeat of his country by Germany. He wrote to his mother in 1941: ‘We have waited eight years, so a few more months won’t hurt. The outcome of it all must now be pretty clear. We all [illegible] a German victory inevitable.’[3] Although, by 1943, the course of the war was no longer going in Germany’s favour, adherence to fascism continued. In a letter from George Callow to Farmer, the onetime District Leader wrote that: ‘Everybody is as keen as they were before the war started and are longing for the war to finish so that we may carry on where we left off.’ Four years into a war against fascism in Germany and Italy and nothing had apparently changed. Neither had the emerging revelation of the Nazi programme to exterminate the Jews led even to circumspection in expressing anti-Semitic sentiments. Callow concluded that ‘[e]verything in the town is much the same (plenty of four by two’s about)’ and signed himself ‘Yours in Union, George, P.J.’[4]

 

Incarceration did nothing to diminish Farmer’s support for fascism but instead seemed to engender fanaticism. Previously he had been an on-and-off supporter of the BUF, originally joining in London in 1934 but then allowing has membership to lapse until 1938, when he rejoined in Gillingham, Kent. Any trace of doubt seems to have disappeared while in detention. He was described as proclaiming his ‘politics on every possible occasion’, habitually wearing a black shirt and B.U. badge’ and being a member of a group of BUF ‘extremists called “an Clachan”’(meaning in Scottish Gaidhlig, ‘the Rock’). A contemporary photograph of Farmer and other 18b internees indicates that 'an Clachan' was also the name of the house in which they lived. Whether the house gave the name to the group or visa versa is not clear. Farmer believed – probably correctly – that a renunciation of his support for the BUF would be sufficient to permit his release but refused to take that step. He also refused to aid the war effort in anyway. He had tried to register as a conscientious objector before he was detained in 1940 and then next year wrote of fellow internees who participated in work on the land: ‘Why chaps will consent to go out and support the very system they seek to destroy is beyond me.’[5]

 

 

Peter Farmer (far right) and other 18b internees

 

In this respect, Farmer was not typical and went beyond the official fascist stance, which combined criticism of the policy of going to war with loyal support of its prosecution. A great many fascists did serve their county, some of whom were killed in action. Most active members of Northampton branch served in the forces and George Callow was invalided out of the Army having had his hearing damaged whilst attached to the Commandos.[6]   The picture of Farmer sketched in the official report was not flattering: ‘…selfish, greedy and disloyal, - a repellent character who has done nothing to deserve sympathy and could not be trusted if he was at liberty.’ He was eventually released in November 1943 but remained under surveillance into the early post-war years, when he was in involved in the creation of the Union Movement as Mosley’s political vehicle after the war. Despite the earlier assertion that the Northampton blackshirts were ‘keen… to carry on where we left off’ and some correspondence between Callow and Farmer about setting up a group, Northampton was fallow ground for Mosleyite fascism after the war.[7] Although Farmer did not return to Northampton he was a Union Movement activist for some years.

 

Fascist Elite: George Drummond and W. Basset-Lowke

 

The newly released security files also clarify the relationship of George Drummond and W. Basset-Lowke  to the BUF. The original article tended towards the opinion that whilst the first of these men was a convinced fascist, the second was perhaps a pacifist who had strayed. Additionally, whatever their contacts or sympathies with British fascism on a national basis, there was no indication of any involvement with the Northampton branch by either man. However, in a post-war letter listing possible supporters of the Union Movement then being formed both men are mentioned. Bassett-Lowke was described as ‘a wealthy industrialist and a good supporter of ours’; Drummond as ‘a personal friend of the Duke of Windsor and also a man of wealth.’[8] Around the same time, in early 1948, in an intercepted  ‘phone call, Farmer stated that Drummond had been ‘a member of our group in Northampton’ and that Bassett-Lowke was ‘one of O.M.’s supporters’.[9] Bassett-Lowke’s name also appeared on list of correspondence sent out from Northampton DHQ in 1940 as the recipient of leaflets.[10]

 

Whether either man did support Mosley’s post-war reprise through the Union Movement is not disclosed in Farmer’s files or in any other source I am aware of. There may have been definite information in the files held by MI5 on Drummond and Bassett-Lowke but these have apparently been destroyed.[11] Quite apart from any general considerations relating to the destruction of historical archives, a question arises over what guidelines would preserve material relating to a minnow like Farmer but shred the files of member of the establishment like Drummond.

 

PMC, 2009

 

Notes