Fascism, Women and Democracy – by Mosleyite veteran Norah Elam

Many British publications and institutions – including the National Archives, British Library, and universities throughout the UK – are celebrating Women’s History Month.

But few are likely to mention the fact that Sir Oswald Mosley’s British Union of Fascists was supported by many of the women who had previously been active ‘suffragette’ campaigners.

Among them was Norah Elam (1878-1961) who was imprisoned in 1914 for her militant campaigning in favour of votes for women, and was interned at the same London prison – Holloway – in 1940 because of her active role in Sir Oswald Mosley’s British Union of Fascists.

Though she lived with fellow Mosleyite Dudley Elam (who was similarly interned without trial under the notorious Regulation 18b) and she took his name, Norah was never actually married to him, as she could not obtain a divorce from the husband she had married in 1909, so legally remained Norah Dacre Fox.

Alongside her prominent role in the women’s section of the BUF, Norah Elam was also a militant campaigner for animal rights and against vivisection.

Norah Elam, a leading activist in the women’s section of the British Union of Fascists

As part of H&D‘s contribution to Women’s History Month – and as a tribute to those women who continue to play important roles in the intellectual and practical leadership of racial nationalism – H&D is republishing online this essay by Norah Elam, first published in The Fascist Quarterly in 1935.

Fascism, Women and Democracy

“Experience shows that in all countries today democracy can develop its nature freely, the most scandalous corruption is displayed without anyone considering it of use to conceal its rascalities… Democracy is the land of plenty dreamt of by unscrupulous financiers.” – Georges Sorel, Reflexions sur la Violence.

To a genuine cynic who lived through the struggle for votes for women from 1906 to 1914, no spectacle is more diverting than the post-war enthusiast whose one obsession seems to be the alleged danger to enfranchised women in a Fascist Britain.

This unsuspected solicitude finds its most insistent champions in unlikely places, and those who were so bitter against the pre-war struggle have today executed a complete volte face. Our new-found patrons are second to none in their determination that women shall be denied nothing in principle, even if in practice they are to be denied most things essential to their existence.

To the woman who took part in that historic fight, and, regarding the vote merely as a symbol, believed that with its help a new and a better world might be possible, this kind of patronage is as distasteful as was that of a generation ago. She thinks, and with some justification, that it is humbug that those who in all those weary years never raised a hand to help her, but on the contrary were wont to describe her as an unsexed virago or a disappointed spinster, should in the hour of success endeavour to exploit her sex in the interests of a reactionary and decadent system. Such effrontery is possible only because those who resort to it entirely misunderstood and still misunderstand the meaning of that struggle, and construed the demand for political liberty as a desire for personal licence.

Two of Norah Elam’s suffragette comrades – Annie Kenney (a working-class woman from Oldham) and Christabel Pankhurst, a middle-class woman from Manchester who achieved a law degree but was barred from the legal profession.

The time has come when the principles which underlay that remarkable and determined manifestation for ordered change, not only in the position of women but in the accepted attitude to them, should be restated.

What was it then, which underlay the passionate stirring that moved the hearts of thousands of women, and guided their heads, in those stormy years? It was not, as so many imagined, the ignoble desire of individual sex-interest, nor a struggle on behalf of women for their own sex alone. On the contrary, from the leaders to the most humble of the rank and file it was the fundamental belief, that in a world peopled by men and women and under a political system controlling the destinies of both sexes, the country which shut out from its councils the influence, viewpoint and talents of more than half its people, would be to that extent handicapped in working out the best system of government. If men were the victims of chaotic economic conditions, women suffered with them. If the social conditions under which men dragged out an almost hopeless existence were intolerable, they were equally so for their womenfolk.

Looking round on the great cities of their land, from north to south and from east to west, they saw housing conditions which man and woman agreed were a disgrace to modern civilization; watching the labour market, they gazed with apprehension on the spectre of insecurity which haunts the wage-earner and which is inherent in the old system. In the political field, they noted that, both in Home and Foreign policy, affairs were being conducted in such a manner as to strike terror into the heart of any person who cared deeply for Britain or realized the decadence that had already begun its erosion upon all parties of the State. They rose to demand that women should be called in on equal terms with men, to lend a hand before it was too late.

This uprising was in short a challenge to the old antagonisms and a call for co-operation in the corporate body of the State.

Norah Dacre Fox in 1915: together with suffragette leader Emmeline Pankhurst, the future Norah Elam was at this point a militant patriotic supporter of Britain’s war effort against the Kaiser’s Germany, though she later became an advocate of Anglo-German cooperation.

In this conception of practical citizenship, the women’s struggle resembles closely the new philosophy of Fascism. Indeed, Fascism is the logical, if much grander, conception of the momentous issues raised by the militant women of a generation ago. Nor do the points of resemblance end here. The Women’s movement, like the Fascist movement, was conducted under strict discipline, and cut across all Party allegiance; its supporters were drawn from every class and Party. It appealed to women to forget self-interest; to relinquish petty personal advantages and the privilege of the sheltered few for the benefit of the many; and to stand together against the wrongs and injustices which were inherent in a system so disastrous to the well-being of the race. Like the Fascist movement, too, it chose its Leader, and once having chosen gave to that Leader absolute authority to direct its policy and destiny, displaying a loyalty and a devotion never surpassed in the history of this country. Moreover, like the Fascist movement again, it faced the brutality of the streets; the jeers of its opponents; the misapprehensions of the well-disposed; and the rancour of the politicians. It endured the hatred of the existing Government, and finally the loneliness of the prison cell and the horror of forcible feeding. Its speakers standing in the open spaces and at the street corners were denied the right of free speech; it champions selling their literature spat upon and reviled; its deputations were manhandled. Suffragettes became the sport of any rowdy who cared to take the law into his own hands. To make the analogy the more exact, no calumny was too vile and no slander too base to set about the moral character of its leaders, or the aims and objects of the women who owed them allegiance.

Thus it came about that women welded together in such association had no illusions about political and party shibboleths, and when the sacred words “Democracy” and “Individual Liberty” were a commonplace on the lips of their detractors, they remembered that these things were done under a Liberal Administration, and by the champions of a Party which had made the democratic system the summit of its political wisdom. That under it, they were classed with criminals, lunatics and children. They argued and with some cogency, that if this were democracy then women had little to hope for from it.

Their experience as outlaws from the democratic system was as nothing compared with that which faced them, when they found themselves honoured citizens under its doubtful protection. They had earned, it is true, the right to individual liberty for a very brief space once every five years, but when they had put that fatal cross upon the ballot paper and closed the door of the polling booth behind them, from that moment they found themselves completely helpless before the democratic machine.

In 1914 militant suffragette Mary Richardson (1883-1961) was arrested for damaging a painting by Velázquez, the ‘Rokeby Venus’, at London’s National Gallery. She is seen here under arrest after this vandalism. Like several other ex-suffragettes, Mary Richardson later joined Mosley’s BUF, where she became head of the women’s section.

Though we shall be told that this was what we had fought for, a moment’s reflexion will show that this was regarded as but the symbol. Women never made the fatal error of imagining that because men voted they were necessarily free. It is the mark of the unintelligent woman today to suppose that a woman is free because she also votes, or that democracy can ever offer anything but the careful and organized exploitation of men and women who suffer it to exist.

Given the vote on a limited basis at the close of the War, women were also granted the right of entering Parliament, and the election in the late autumn of 1918 gave them their first opportunity. The Party system was already beginning to show the first signs of decay, and by the inexorable law of retributive justice, the Party which had given birth to democracy in Britain was in full retreat before its ungrateful offspring. Nevertheless, women in the first flush of their triumph turned to the then existing parties either as voters or prospective candidates.

Countess Markievicz (above), a supporter of IRA terrorism, became the first woman elected to the British Parliament. Despite having campaigned for women to have the vote, Norah Elam despised Markievicz and the IRA, and saw parliamentary democracy as a sham.

My own distrust of Party politics made me chary of turning in this direction, and I preferred to stand as an Independent, going down with all the other women candidates on this occasion, save one. The exception was the Sinn Fein Countess Markievicz, who though a notorious and avowed enemy of Britain, found it a perfectly simple matter under the democratic system to secure election to the Parliament of the country which she had openly boasted that she would destroy, disintegrate and discredit. She was, if I remember rightly, returned unopposed. The next example was hardly more encouraging, for the first woman to be elected for an English constituency was an American-born citizen who had no credentials to represent British women in their own Parliament, save that she had married a British subject who found himself forced to the Upper House on the death of his father. Detractors of the Women’s Movement pointed with a hardly disguised satisfaction to this denouement, and were at pains to hold up this lady as a sorry specimen of feminine irresponsibility. They need not have been so personal, for she was no better and no worse than any other woman elected to the British House of Commons, as a result of years of effort and struggle of the militant women. It is a sorry fact, though none the less true, that the subsequent election of Party women to Westminster has not made one tittle of difference either to men or to women, and though many able women have joined the ranks of our elected representatives their influence has been wholly negligible on the destinies of Britain or her Empire. They, like their men colleagues, are simply cogs in the Party wheels of the democratic system, marching into the lobbies at the crack of the Party Whip, helpless before the Juggernaut of the official machinery which rolls on, crushing all initiative and independence before it, and reducing every person who owes it allegiance to a mere cipher for the carrying through of its policies and its measures. And if this be true of Parliament – and who can deny it? – it is even more true of the woman voter. She, too, is caught up in this inexorable system, a veritable slave to her Party organization.

To those who challenge this, the question must be put: What power has the woman member or the woman voter, under the present system, to alter any one policy of any government yet elected? Does the most enthusiastic admirer of the present system allege that women, no matter to what party they belong, are satisfied with the existing position of this country?  Are they willing to see economic conditions whereby the employment figures have reached the incredible total of between two and three millions remain unchanged? Do they rest content with the spectacle of those derelict areas which strike despair into the heart of every living person? Are they indifferent to the decay of the agricultural districts and the plight of the farming industry and unconcerned with the appalling housing conditions which all parties alike deplore?

The British Union of Fascists strongly supported farmers driven into poverty during the 1930s by the imposition of tithes, a form of taxation by the church. This was one of many issues where Norah Elam saw women and men having a common interest in challenging a rapacious and unjust system.

Turning to the vast field of Imperial and Foreign politics, is it to be contended that the bulk of British women desire to see the disintegration of the Empire, or the orientation of the present foreign policy of the alleged National Government, whereby pacts and commitments are being made in their names and in secret with the avowed enemies of this country, while at the same time we are being left defenceless, not only for the purposes of our own immediate defence, but if the need should arise to honour those commitments? Do we indeed know to what we are being committed; what this policy of collective security involves, or what is the sinister power which dictates it? “Democracy is the land of plenty dreamt of by unscrupulous financiers,” says Georges Sorel. Have enfranchised women any power to check a Home or a Foreign policy dictated for the purpose of making that dream a living reality? Let it be remembered that when the time comes to foot the bill, we shall be driven as sleep to the slaughter, helpless before the results of these policies. What is the value of so-called freedom if it cannot give us the power to alter these momentous issues?

If it be true that the average woman voter wants none of these things, why, if she be free under the democratic system, does she permit them? If she possesses this freedom, is she not doubly and trebly guilty in suffering them for one hour longer? This is the test of her claim to a responsible part in the government of her country. If she has gained the necessary power and liberty under the existing system, the charge that she is incapable of playing a citizen’s part in the affairs of her country, and is in fact unfitted for responsibility, is proved up to the hilt.

None of these things is true. The truth will be found in the fact that there is no freedom either for men or for women under the present antiquated system. What fetters both men and women is that the Party system is in decay, and this is the more noticeable since the granting of adult suffrage under an unbridled democracy. Throughout the world the same decadence has set in, by the inevitable march of time and circumstance, the change from a world of poverty to a world of boundless plenty makes ordered planning not only requisite but vital to existence. Under these changes the methods of the old world are obsolete and must give place to the new. If women are to be worthy of their place in the councils of the nation, they must face as realists the new world conditions which are gathering round them. Sooner or later they must choose. The decision is momentous, for upon it will depend the status of women for a considerable period of time. It is therefore no light matter that they should weigh well in the balance the history of the world.

The future Lady Mosley, then Diana Guinness (above, second right) with her sister Unity Mitford and the children of her first marriage to Bryan Guinness. Her eldest son Jonathan (above, far right) became chairman of the Conservative Monday Club, and today is his 93rd birthday.

There are two courses open to women. The first is that she should struggle on with the decaying system of the old world, content to be the handmaid of the professional politicians of the various parties to which she attaches herself. Of this it may be said that she has given it a long and faithful trial, and that if under it she could have accomplished any practical change in the direction of social, political or economic freedom, she has lamentably failed. She must now consider whether the fault lies within herself or within the system to which she still clings. In this connexion she will note that the separate parties are themselves gradually disappearing. The Liberal Party has passed into the twilight of the past; the Conservative Party is in rapid disintegration, and we know upon the assurance of its own Leader, that there is no hope of its regaining its independence. The same fate awaits the Socialist Party, since it too must travel along the same road which has sucked the other two parties under the quicksand of Social Democracy.

She must therefore look for some better system; one more in accord with modern conditions. What is to take the place of the tottering edifice of the past?

Every student of politics realizes that the issue now lies between Fascism and Communism. So far as British women are concerned, Communism makes little appeal. To go no further, it is the philosophy of destruction, and is the negation of the natural instincts of womanhood. It is the antithesis of every principle and practice which women value and require.

Members of the BUF Women’s Drum Corps

Fascism seems to be the only solution. It has within it every principle peculiarly suitable and adaptable to the genius of the British character. It offers real freedom and liberty to all men and women of goodwill towards this country. Lest there should be any misunderstanding, we shall define these so often loosely-used terms, in words with which no democrat will quarrel, for they are taken from that apostle of unadulterated democracy, John Stuart Mill.

“The sole end,” he wrote, “for which mankind are warranted individually or collectively in interfering with the liberty of action of any of their number, is self-protection. The only purpose for which power can be rightfully exercised over any member of a civilized community against his will is to prevent harm to others.”

This is precisely the Fascist conception of individual liberty, and it is obviously a conception that so far as women are concerned gives them every opportunity that they can legitimately require in their future status as women citizens. In no other system are these principles embodied. Moreover, in the machinery of the Corporate State, Fascism assures women an equal status with their menfolk, for it holds within it the only means whereby they will be enabled to direct and control the conditions under which they shall live; thus Fascism alone will complete the work begun on their behalf by the militant women from 1906 to 1914. In addition, it will rescue them from the vitiated atmosphere of corruption inherent in the Party system, and for the first time it will give an opportunity, through the machinery of their own special Corporations, tackling with some hope of success those great questions which so closely concern their own and their children’s lives.

In the economic field it will assure security with equal pay for equal work, that eternal bone of contention which has rent the sexes asunder with such dire results to industry.

In the social sphere, it removes all class barriers, while in the political, it gives justice and equality for the first time in the history of the Women’s struggle.

And most important of all, Fascism comes to lay for ever the haunting spectre of war, by removing the fundamental causes, which exist and have their being in Internationalism, an instrument forged for the purpose of enabling “unscrupulous financiers” to take advantage of that “land of plenty” called “democracy” of which they dream.

To enable all this to be accomplished, Fascism will require that women equally with men should offer a disciplined cooperation in the welding together of an ordered State, and Fascism will rightly lay upon all the citizens of the State the responsibility and the duty of working in harmony, not in the interests of any section or class but for the benefit of all its people. It will call upon women as upon men, to subordinate all selfish individual privileges, that the less fortunate may under its protection be safe from exploitation.

This is Fascism. All else is mirage. Is it to be said that British women cannot rise to this great occasion in the history of their country? Those who would bid them reject this opportunity are the enemies not alone of women, but of all progress and of civilization. Those women who endured the ordeal of the great struggle of pre-war days have at least learned the right to challenge the people who once again would enslave them in the subjugation of the past, and fetter them within a system which denies them all opportunity to play an honourable part in the necessary reorganization of their country. British women have never failed or faltered when Britain has had need of them. They too, with the men of their generation, will raise aloft the banner of British Fascism, and bearing it high above the turmoil and sordid quarrels of the Party system, will hasten that day which shall see their nation reborn. In that triumphant hour, they will have truly earned the proud right to pay homage to a regenerated and Great Britain, and to rest at last within the Peace, Security and Prosperity of her Sovereign People.

Lady Mosley with her husband Sir Oswald Mosley and their son Max in 1940. They were both interned without trial that year under Regulation 18b.
Two of Europe’s leading racial nationalist activists of the new generation – Isabel Peralta and Laura Towler – at a Heritage and Destiny event in September 2022.

Political change in Britain: 40 years after Bermondsey

Political journalists have been looking back forty years on the anniversary of the Bermondsey by-election, a famous gain on 24th February 1983 for the Liberal / SDP ‘Alliance’, whose candidate Simon Hughes achieved what is still the largest swing in by-election history: 44.2%, turning a Labour majority of 11,756 into an Alliance majority of almost 10,000.

Most of the publicity (including several interviews with the defeated Labour candidate Peter Tatchell) has focused on the question of ‘gay rights’, an agenda that has moved on considerably in the intervening decades. Tatchell made no secret of his homosexuality, though at the time he was not so closely identified with the ‘gay rights’ cause as he later became.

Tatchell was vilified by the tabloid press, who gleefully picked up the ‘homophobic’ abuse that was thrown at him, mainly by his rivals on the decaying and often corrupt old ‘right-wing’ of the Labour Party. These included retiring MP Bob Mellish and his ally John O’Grady, long-serving leader (1968-82) of the local Southwark Council.

O’Grady had been ousted as Labour candidate for the Dockyard ward that he had represented since Southwark council’s creation in 1964, while Mellish decided to retire as an MP so as to take a well-paid position as vice-chairman of the London Dockyard Development Corporation. (He eventually became Lord Mellish of Bermondsey.)

Peter Tatchell, controversial Labour candidate defeated at Bermondsey

Looking back on the by-election, Tatchell’s views don’t seem especially ‘far left’ even by the standards of the time, let alone by today’s standards. The real issues affecting Londoners (then as now) included housing. Tatchell and the Labour left had (justifiably) campaigned against the record of their own party, who took local voters for granted and did far too little for council tenants.

Totally ignored by all of the mainstream parties was the ethnic transformation of London which had already begun: parts of the Southwark and Bermondsey area now regularly see gun and knife crime that would once have been rare. And today’s viewers of the 1983 by-election coverage will be astonished to see that forty years ago White working-class voters were still a very large percentage of the electorate.

Sadly the racial nationalist challenge in these areas had already declined by 1983. There were at least four rival candidates from our broad movement. Jim Sneath from the National Front polled 426 votes (1.4%) and finished fifth of what was then a record sixteen candidates. Anti-immigration campaigner Lady Birdwood (standing as an ‘Independent Patriot’) polled 69 votes (0.2%), slightly ahead of Michael Keulemans from the New Britain Party with 62 votes (0.2%), while Ann King of the National Labour Party (a tiny splinter from the NF, formed in 1981) took just 25 votes (0.1%).

This was the sad outcome from several years of decline for the NF in this area. Less than six years earlier at the Greater London Council elections, Sneath had polled 1,515 votes (8.8%) in this constituency, despite the rival National Party even then splitting the nationalist vote and taking 239 votes (1.4%). In other words a combined nationalist vote of 10.2% in 1977 had fallen to 1.9% in 1983.

It’s understandable that voters were confused and disillusioned by the factionalism that had overtaken the NF during those six years.

Many White working-class voters in 1983 backed ousted council leader O’Grady, who stood as ‘Real Bermondsey Labour’ (even though in many ways he represented the worst of the ‘Old Labour’ establishment partly responsible for the area’s decline). He took third place in the by-election with 2,243 votes (7.6%). John O’Grady died in April 2009, having witnessed the total extinction (for better and worse) of the ‘Old Labour Party’ that he knew.

But the main beneficiary of local voters’ disgust with Labour (both left and right), was the Liberal-SDP Alliance candidate Simon Hughes. Despite his own (secret) bisexuality, Hughes also benefited from the ‘homophobic’ reaction against Tatchell.

(There is still controversy over the extent to which some Alliance activists, though not Hughes himself, deliberately encouraged this ‘homophobia’.)

It’s ironic that two of the three mainstream politicians on the panel in the ITV by-election programme (see video link above) had their own ‘scandals’ in their private lives. Liberal MP Sir Clement Freud was later accused of predatory abuse of underage girls, while Tory chairman Cecil Parkinson had to resign at the end of 1983 after fathering a child with his secretary. Robert Hughes (the Tory candidate at this by-election) also had to resign as a minister twelve years later after admitting an affair with a constituent.

On most issues today Tatchell would probably fit into the mainstream of Labour, while Mellish and O’Grady would be a London version of ‘Red Wall’ Tories. The Southwark and Bermondsey area is now unrecognisable, with most of the White working-class having left, and replaced by an assortment of ethnic minorities (including many Africans) and trendy young middle-class Whites.

Neil Coyle, Labour MP for Bermondsey since 2015, seems likely to be ousted at the next election after his suspension for a drunken ‘racist’ rant.

Yet the local Labour party remains mired in controversy. Neil Coyle – the Labour MP who eventually ousted Hughes in 2015 – has been suspended from Labour for more than a year and was recently suspended by the parliamentary standards commissioner after an incident of alcohol-fuelled ‘racist’ abuse against a journalist.

Coyle seems likely to be replaced at the next election, but sadly the days when racial nationalists could expect strong votes in Bermondsey are long gone. There are many parts of the UK where a reunited and reinvigorated racial nationalist movement has great potential, but Bermondsey is not among them. The proud history of its White working-class has long since ebbed away with the tide of the River Thames, and is now history.

Obituary – Professor Roger Pearson M.Sc. (Econ), Ph.D., (London): 1927 – 2023

Dr Roger Pearson (above right) has died aged 95: he is seen here with his good friend Dr Ed Fields in Washington DC, in 2000, during the time when H&D editor Mark Cotterill worked at Dr Pearson’s office.

All of us at H&D were saddened to hear of the recent death of Dr. Roger Pearson, who was a long-standing subscriber to Heritage and Destiny magazine – in fact he was our eldest subscriber, aged 95, when he died in Washington DC, in January.

Dr. Pearson was a true English gentleman in every sense. He was born in London, in 1927, but spent much of his childhood in Yorkshire. In October 1944, towards the end of the Second World War, he joined the British Army, despite his entitlement to exemption from military service to attend University after completing his Higher School Certificate examinations.

He had volunteered for military service and was inducted into the British Army with a view to obtaining a commission in the (British) Indian Army. After completing basic infantry and corps training with the Queens Royal Regiment in Maidstone, Kent, Roger and his fellow cadets embarked for India to attend the British Indian Army Pre-Officer Training School (Pre-OTS) at Bangalore.

Dr Pearson as an officer in the (British) Indian Army in 1946.

In July 1946 he was commissioned from the British Indian Army OTS Kakul (which today is the Pakistan Military Academy) to serve as a 2nd Lieutenant with Indian troops in Meerut. However, with the approaching Independence of India and Pakistan, he was shortly transferred to service as a 1st Lieutenant with the British Indian Division in the occupation of Japan (Shikoku and Tokyo), from January 1947 to January 1948.

I remember him telling me of how shocked and saddened he was by the behaviour of the American GIs in occupied Japan, and their brutal treatment of the local people, including beatings, theft and numerous rapes of young Japanese women. I asked him about the conduct of our own squaddies over there and he said in general they were very well behaved, and he would have expected nothing less from them. Dr. Pearson always had a very low opinion of American soldiers, and hated their “hazing” tactics, which he described as “very unprofessional”.

His final military service was as a 1st Lieutenant with the British Army in Singapore and Malaya, from January to April 1948.

On leaving the army in 1948, Roger attended university in England. After obtaining a B.Sc.(honours) in economics and sociology, he returned to India in 1952 in a business capacity, first as an assistant accountant in Calcutta (now Kolkata), but eventually as the CEO of several companies in East Pakistan (now Bangladesh), primarily in the tea industry – then Pakistan’s second largest export. During this period (1959-65) he served on the Board of the Pakistan Tea Association and was elected President, 1963-4. During that year he was ex officio a member of the Pakistan Tea Board, and the Managing Committee of the Federation of Pakistan Chambers of Commerce and Industry.

During his service in India and East Pakistan, Roger retained a strong interest in cultural matters. While in Calcutta (1955-1959), he made numerous journalistic contributions to The Statesman and to The Hindustan Standard and a few short broadcast presentations on All-India Radio. He also wrote Eastern Interlude, a Social History of the European Community in Calcutta from 1649-1911, described by the Hindustan Times (India) as “a vivid picture of European social life in India free from prejudices and prepossessions”; by the Hindustan Standard (India) as “objective …brilliant”; by the Indian PEN “Exceptionally well-balanced”; and by The Times (London) as “most diverting and readable…amusing and vivid… it comes to life on every page”. While I was working for him at his DC office, he republished the book (the original was well out of print by then) around 1999 and sold a further couple of hundred copies.

He was invited to serve as a member of the Cultural Advisory Committee of the Asiatic Society of Bengal, but this honour was brief because he soon afterwards left India for Pakistan. Roger Pearson is also proud of having saved the historic and architecturally important South Park Street Cemetery (dating from 1765-1815 when Calcutta was the capital of British India) from demolition. On his offer to set up a restoration fund, the Christian Burial Board, which lacked the funds to restore the decaying monuments, agreed to halt demolition and allow him to establish a fund which, with the eventual support of the Calcutta architect Bernard Matthews, Aurelius David Khan, ICS, and Sir John Woodhead, former and last British Governor of Bengal, succeeded in restoring most of the monuments and having the cemetery declared a National Monument by the Government of India.

Having lost his only brother (a Battle of Britain pilot, killed in North Africa shortly after his 21st birthday), four cousins (three pilots/one aircrew) and two close school friends, all without offspring, to the Second World War, Roger was shocked by the massive dysgenic loss resulting from internecine war in Europe.

He was also saddened by the cultural destruction when he visited war-torn Europe as a student in 1950 and found inspiration at a student summer school in Aachen University in Germany, funded by several European governments with the goal of promoting healing across Europe. Roger instinctively perceived its value and four years later, when employed with a British bank in Calcutta, he founded Northern World, a cultural, non-political Journal of North European Friendship, with the particular goal of promoting reconciliation between the closely related nations of Northern Europe who had so recently been engaged in destroying each other in two “Brothers’ Wars”.

Northern World was favourably received in like-minded circles, including the famed author J.R.R. Tolkien (who also subscribed to AK Chesterton’s Candour journal) and the agrarian environmentalist, Rolf Gardiner, both of whom sent personal letters of congratulation. The success of this venture led Roger, now a rising business executive, to announce the formation of a society – along with Peter Huxley-Blythe, to promote North European friendship, called The Northern League for North European Friendship (more commonly known as The Northern League). Under Roger’s leadership the League remained mainly a cultural and essentially non-political organization. With his business responsibilities mounting rapidly, by 1961 he found it necessary to resign his membership and from all Northern League activities.

Following his withdrawal, the Northern League became more political and published a new journal called The Northlander. British members included Robert Gayre, Alistair Harper, Colin Jordan, and John Tyndall,

By 1965, the situation for old-established British firms operating in India and Pakistan was deteriorating. China had already fought a war with India over the borders of Assam, and India was shortly to invade Pakistan and convert East Pakistan into Bangladesh. Roger could see the tide was turning and sold his own commercial interests and moved to America. On his departure he received a farewell address from the Pakistani employees stating, “Your love, affection and sympathy for your staff are never to be forgotten and specially during the reorganization we have found that you have put yourself out to a great extent in finding the retrenched staff employment, which we feel, can only be equalled by a very few.”

Dr Roger Pearson

After leaving Asia East, Pearson returned to England for a few months before leaving to the United States, just before the infamous 1965 Immigration Act, which was aimed at stopping British and other Western Europeans from emigrating freely to America. Once, there he spent a year or so in California editing and writing articles and engaging in lecturing before embarking on a ten-month tour of the Caribbean and Southern Africa.

Returning to the United States, he joined the faculty of the Department of Sociology at the University of Southern Mississippi as an Assistant Professor (1968), wrote his Introduction to Anthropology (published in 1974 by what was then the largest Anthropology publishing house in the USA), accepted a position as Associate Professor and Department Head of the Sociology at Queen’s College, Charlotte (today Queens University of Charlotte), before returning to the University of Southern Mississippi (commonly known as ‘Ole Miss’) as Full Professor and Chairman of a new Department of Anthropology offering both Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees.

At ‘Ole Miss’ Dr. Pearson launched the the Journal of Indo-European Studies and the JIES Monograph series (1972) in collaboration with and under the guidance of the distinguished UCLA archaeologist Marija Gimbutas and University of Texas linguist and mythologist Edgar Polome. He continued to publish JIES via The Institute for the Study of Man until well into his late 80s. It is now edited by Emily Blanchard West (St. Catherine).

In the mid-1960s Dr. Pearson teamed up with Willis Carto (who would later go on to run Liberty Lobby and publish the Spotlight newspaper) for a while and they published a magazine called Western Destiny (1965-66), which was probably the first high quality journal the “American Right” had published since the end of WWII. They stayed friends up until the late 1990s when Willis Carto fell out with Dr. Pearson for not being extreme enough! From 1966 to 1967 under the pen-name “Stephan Langton”, Dr. Pearson published (via Noontide Press) The New Patriot, a magazine devoted to “a responsible but penetrating inquiry into every aspect of the Jewish Question”.

However, not content with standing still, in 1974, Dr. Pearson accepted a position as Dean of Academic Affairs and Director of Research at Montana Tech of the University of Montana in Butte, Montana, a mile high in the beautiful Rocky Mountains, in the course of which he also became ex-officio Secretary of the Montana Energy and Magnetohydrodynamic Research and Development Institute.

During his time in Montana he joined the World Anti-Communist League (WACL). Further adventures now called, and after one year Dr. Pearson again moved, this time to Washington, D.C. (1975) where he founded the Council on American Affairs as the new U.S. chapter. He went on to become Director of the North American Chapter of WACL and publisher and editor of a new journal entitled The Journal of American Affairs (founded 1975), which later changed its name to The Journal of Social, Political, and Economic Studies). In the early years the journal published articles by both scholars, and senators and congressmen. Dr. Pearson continued to publish JSPS via Scott-Townsend until well into his late 80s.

Traveling widely to attend WACL conferences throughout the Far East, South and Central America, and Europe, Dr. Pearson conferenced face to face with several Heads of State, including King Faisal of Saudi Arabia. In 1978 he was elected World Chairman of the World Anti-Communist League in 1978 and hosted the 1979 World Conference of the League in Washington DC. The five-day proceedings were attended by upwards of a thousand WACL members and guests from free countries around the globe (including Lady Jane Birdwood from the UK). The Opening Ceremony was conducted with the aid of The U.S. Joint Armed Services Honour Guard and the Marine Corps Band and addressed by two U.S. Senators!

Delegates (including Lady Jane Birdwood from the UK) at a World Anti-Communist League conference in the 1970s, chaired by Dr Roger Pearson.

While Pravda in Moscow was ready to condemn the Conference out of hand, the left-wing Washington Post (WP), which had had a reporter at the Conference, totally ignored it for some thirty days while preparing a virtually full-page attack on both the WACL and its president, Dr. Pearson. Writing fancifully about “fascists” and South American “death squads”, the author of the Post article also levelled charges against Dr. Pearson’s alleged efforts to enrol “extremists” into WACL – surely not!

Indeed, it is a fact that, unlike the delegates from Taiwan, Korea, Japan and Central and Southern America, Pearson found the WACL European and Asian chapters replete with delegates who were almost soft on Communism (not including Lady Birdwood of course!). One Indian delegate constantly attacked “neo-colonialism”, but seemed never to mention the very real Communist threat to freedom in the 1960s and ’70s.

Dr Pearson chairing the WACL Conference

Dr. Pearson consequently promoted the recruitment of more genuine anti-Communists, such as the Italian Social Movement (MSI), at that time the fourth largest political party in Italy, whose successors – the Fratelli d’Italia (‘Brothers of Italy’) won Italy’s parliamentary elections in September 2022: their leader Giorgia Meloni became her country’s first female prime minister. I’m sure that brought a smile to his face!

After the WACL Dr. Pearson continued to work with the American Security Council, the Foreign Policy Research Institute, and the Journal of International Relations. But efforts by the liberal-left to frustrate his work continued. His scientific comprehension of Darwinian reality, and the importance of genetic, cultural, and environmental concerns for the survival of humanity, made him a target for those who care only about the present generation, and not those numberless generations hopefully still to come. His sociological and anthropological training meant that he never stressed the biological at the expense of the environmental, because biological organisms are dependent on the ecosphere – and also on a culture that supports both the biological and the environmental heritage. This the liberal-left hated, and they carried on a campaign against him and his work well into the 2000s.

Concerned about the future of the human race, Dr. Pearson became a Member of the British Eugenics Society, now known as the Galton Institute, as early as 1963, and was elected a Fellow in 1977. In 1979 he also assumed publication of Professor Robert Gayre’s Mankind Quarterly, which the latter had founded in 1960 with the aid of distinguished scholars such as Henry Vallois, S.D. Porteus, and Sir Charles B. Darwin. As the earlier generation of contributors passed on, he was able to recruit distinguished scholars to replace them, such as Joseph Campbell, Raymond B. Cattell, Hans Eysenck and William Shockley. Dr. Pearson continued to publish MQ via Scott-Townsend until well into his late 80s, and around 2010 passed it over to Prof. Richard Lynn, who publishes it via the Ulster Institute for Social Research.

Dr Pearson welcomed many delegates from around the world to anti-communist conferences

In 1990 Pearson founded the bi-monthly Conservative Review, an American version of Right NOW!, and published it via the Council for Social and Economic Studies. The magazine lasted almost seven years, but folded in 1997, due to lack of support from the “right-wing” of the GOP.

Not forgetting the importance of Universities to the rising generation, and concerned by the premeditated campus disruptions during the 1960s and 70s, Dr. Pearson joined the University Professors for Academic Order (UPAO), and served as its President 1980-84. Combining his credentials in the social sciences with his practical experience in the commercial world, his bank training in accounting, and his professional status as a former Fellow of the British Institute of Chartered Secretaries and Administrators and member of the British Institute of Directors, he also served as a Trustee of the Benjamin Franklin University in Washington D.C. for a number of years before that respected institution, noted for the quality of its alumni, was absorbed into Georgetown University.

In 1984 Pearson received a Certificate of Appreciation signed by General Daniel O. Graham, Director of the Defence Intelligence Agency under President Reagan, and later of High Frontier, expressing “grateful appreciation for the important work you have done to prepare the way for a more secure world.” Also, a 1985 written accolade from the US Department of Education for “outstanding service to U.S. Education, and Education Reform Efforts”. But perhaps the most significant tribute, and one that annoyed Pearson’s critics most strongly, was a signed letter from President Ronald Reagan commending Pearson for “promoting and upholding those ideals and principles that we value at home and abroad …bringing to a wide audience the work of leading scholars who are supportive of a free enterprise economy, a firm and consistent foreign policy and a strong national defence.”
Later an embarrassed White House official asked Dr. Pearson not to use the letter for publicity purposes, after they had come under attack from the Washington Post!

Dr Pearson introduced genuine committed activists to strengthen anti-communist campaigns during the 1970s.

Dr. Pearson wrote over a dozen books including:

Eastern Interlude. Thacker Spink, Calcutta; Luzac and Co., London (1953) – republished by Scott-Townsend 1999.

Eugenics and Race. London: Clair Press; Los Angeles: Noontide Press (1958).

Blood Groups and Race. 2nd ed. London: Clair Press; Los Angeles: Noontide Press (1966).

Race & Civilisation. 2nd Ed. London: Clair Press; Los Angeles: Noontide Press (1966).

Early Civilizations of the Nordic Peoples. London: Northern World (1958); Los Angeles: Noontide Press (1965).

Introduction to Anthropology: An Ecological/Evolutionary Approach. New York: Holt Rinehart and Winston (1974)

Sino-Soviet Intervention in Africa. Council on American Affairs (1977)

Korea in the World Today. Washington, D.C.: Council on American Affairs (1978)

Ecology and Evolution. Washington, D.C.: Mankind Quarterly Monograph (1981)

Essays in Medical Anthropology. Washington, D.C.: Scott-Townsend Publishers (1981)

Anthropological Glossary. Marla at, FL: Krieger Publishing (1985)

Evolution, Creative Intelligence, and Intergroup Competition. Cliveden Press (1986)

William Shockley: Shockley on Eugenics and Race: The Application of Science to the Solution of Human Problems. Preface by Arthur Jensen. Washington, D.C.: Scott-Townsend Publishers (1992).

Race, Intelligence and Bias in Academe. Introduction by Hans Eysenck.[47] Scott-Townsend Publishers, Washington, D.C., 1991. (2nd. Ed. 1994).

Heredity and Humanity: Race, Eugenics and Modern Science. Washington, D.C.: Scott-Townsend Publishers (1991) [2nd ed. 1998].

Dr Pearson in 1975 with distinguished Saudi, Yemeni and Taiwanese government ministers, ambassadors and university leaders

I first met Dr. Pearson in 1996 a year or so after I had moved from Devon in England to live the States. A mutual friend Carl Knittle, who was working for him at his down-town DC office at the time introduced us. Carl had just handed in his notice, and they were looking for his replacement, which turned out to be me!

I ended up working there for over six years, and only left when the US Government issued me with a ten-year exclusion order towards the end of 2002, so I had no choice but to leave and return to dear old Blighty.

From his DC office – which was only six or seven blocks from the White House – and only one block away from a black (now Hispanic) ghetto! – Dr. Pearson edited and published three journals, the Journal of Social, Political and Economic Studies (JSPS), the Journal of Indo-European Studies (JIES) and his pride and joy the Mankind Quarterly (MQ). He also published numerous books and monographs, many sold through his mail order (and later online) book shop – Scott Townsend Books.

Dr Pearson’s home and office at 1133 13th Street NW, Washington DC. His office was on the ground floor, while he and his wife had a flat on the fourth floor.

Both Dr. Pearson and his wife Marion – who died around ten years before him – were very kind to me. In fact, if it had not been for them, I don’t think I would have survived so long Stateside. They had four children, two boys and two girls. The girls both married Europeans (a Frenchman and a German) and they were very proud to have a true pan-European family. Their eldest son Edwin was born (in India) on exactly the same day as me (in Worcester) on October 3rd, 1960, which they both found amusing. Sadly, Edwin died very young in his forties.

During those six years working at his office at 1133 on 13th Street, NW, I met so many interesting people, including to name but a few Dr. Philippe Rushton, Prof. Glayde Whitney, Attorney Sam Dickson, Paul Fromm, and the men with the deep pockets – Harry Weyher and Bill Regnery.

American Renaissance, which is run by Jared Taylor, used to hold their annual conference near to their office in Northern Virginia, not too far away from down-town Washington DC, so many conference attendees use to pop into the our office to say hello, and sometimes taking Dr. Pearson out for lunch, en route to the conference. It was always nice to meet new and old friends.

Two other “doctors” from time to time used to visit the office, when passing through DC – Dr. William L. Pierce and Dr. Edward R. Fields – they would normally go out with Dr. Pearson for either lunch or dinner depending on the time of the visit. I later found out that during Dr. Pierce’s last visit the FBI had staked out the building! They tailed them both to a local restaurant, sat inside at a table close to theirs while they ate and talked, then tailed them back to the office. It seems that every time Dr. Pierce left the National Alliance compound in West Virginia, to go out of town, the Feds went with him! Anyway, it was good to see American taxes were put to good use!

President Reagan’s controversial letter to Dr Pearson

And then there was “9-11”. On September 11th 2001, I got into the office on time, which was a couple of minutes before 9am and started to drink my coffee (I would do the typically American thing of eating my bagel while walking to work!). Up until then – as they say – it was just a normal day at the office!

Dr. Pearson was already in his office (which was the room next door to mine) hard at work. He normally got there before me, around 8.45am most mornings. However, he did not have very far to travel – as he lived in an apartment (flat) just above the office, on the 4th or 5th floor (I think). We said our usual pleasantries, and I then got on with going through the mail from the previous day (I did not normally work on a Monday) and from the weekend.

Looking back on it, around the time I was getting my breakfast, around 8.46am, New York was turning into a scene of devastation after the first of the two planes smashed into the North Tower of the World Trade Center. And around the time I was sitting down at my desk and starting to open the mail, around 9.03am the second plane was smashing into the South Tower.

Both 110 storey towers collapsed within an hour and forty-two minutes, leading to the collapse of the other World Trade Center structures including the 7 World Trade Center, and significantly damaging all the surrounding buildings.

Of course, Dr. Pearson and I were oblivious to all this, as we did not have a radio or TV on in either office, and it was just before the days of smart phones.

The first we knew that something was wrong, was when Dr. Pearson’s wife Marion rang him from their upstairs flat, where I guess she was watching the events unfold on TV. He told me what she had told him, but to honest it did not really sink in there and then what was going on. So, we just carried on working as normal.

I guess five minutes later, just before 9.20am we got another phone call which I answered this time. It was BNP leader Nick Griffin! He told us basically what Mrs. Pearson had just told us, that two hijacked planes had crashed into the Twin Towers at the World Trade Center, but then added that two more planes were now on their way to DC to blow up the White House and Capital Buildings, and that we needed to get out quickly!

Of course, even we wanted to get out – which we didn’t – where were we meant to get out to? However, Nick meant well, and I appreciate him warning us anyway, even though there was nothing we could do about it. I thanked him and told him we would not be moving from the building at this time, but if he could ring back with any updates, that would be very useful.

I talked over the situation with Dr. Pearson, and he said he did not think the planes would even reach DC, and even if they did, their targets were so far away from us that we would “probably be ok”! So, we sat back down at our desks and carried on working.

Dr Roger Pearson at his Washington office in 2013

However, we had only been back at our desks for a couple of minutes, when we heard a hell of a commotion going on outside our building. At 9:37am, the third of the hijacked planes crashed into the west side of the Pentagon (the headquarters of the American military, as well as a large underground shopping mall), which was just over the Potomac River in NW Arlington, Virginia, causing a partial collapse of the building’s west side.

To give you an idea of distance, The Pentagon is about three and miles south east of our office, maybe a ten-minute drive away. It’s just south of Arlington National Cemetery, and just north of Alexandria.

I can remember hearing an explosion, and then the noise of hundreds of other office workers, and locals outside our office on the streets. I said to Dr. Pearson that I was going outside to see what the heck was happening, because we had no windows in the office so I could not peer out. Once outside I could see all the smoke in the distance, and word got round that the Pentagon had been hit.

I can’t remember there being a panic, but a lot of my fellow DC workers were very concerned as word had got around that the 4th plane was on its way to DC!

However, the 4th plane – United 93 – never reached DC. And US authorities even to this day, don’t know for sure if the target was to have been the White House or the Capitol.

The story put about by President Bush’s spin-doctors that the passengers aboard United 93 decided to act once they realized all was lost – i.e. storm the flight deck, attack the terrorists and bring the plane down before it reached Washington DC – sadly did not happen. But why would it have done, it never happened on the other three hijacked flights, and they had many more passengers.

What did really happen, was that Bush ordered United 93 to be shot down before it got anywhere near DC. This flight was the only plane not to hit its intended target, instead after being shot down it crashed in a field near Shanksville, Pennsylvania, about 170 miles from DC at 10:03 am.

Once the news spread around DC that plane number four had crashed and that there were probably no more hijacked planes up in the skies, most of the workers either returned to their offices – as I did – or they left and started to make their way back home.

Dr Pearson’s institute received funds from important American donors including the Pioneer Fund

I asked Dr. Pearson what we should do, and he said, “just carry on working Mark”! Which is what I did until around noon when I went for an early lunch. All public transport in DC was in the process of being stopped, but most of the bars and restaurants seemed to be open, with customers glued to the TVs. I found a Subway close by and got a meal and a soda (pop to you Brits!) and tried to check my cell phone, only to find it not working. The internet had also gone down, but landlines were still working.

I made my way back to the office, where Dr. Pearson was still working. He informed me he was then going up upstairs to his flat for his lunch. So, I just went back to work. Strange when you look back on it.

My girlfriend of the time (Jackie) was calling the office every half an hour or so, asking when I was going to get out of DC and come home. I told her the same thing each time: as soon as I can.

Dr. Pearson came back down to the office around 2pm I guess, and told me to pack up for the day, since it would take me ages to get home as there was no public transport. Even most of the ‘enriched’ taxi drivers had gone home by then. So, I called Jackie back from the office landline and said I was going to start to make my way back to Falls Church, but be prepared for a long wait as it may take a while!

A full report of the events from “9-11” can be found on the H&D website – click here for details.

There are so many incredible stories I could tell you about Dr. Roger Pearson and the goings on at the office and around DC, including our trips to the Martin Luther King Jr. Post Office, which used to run out of stamps!; our trip with Zach (who use to work part time at the office himself in the early days) to Burger King, where Dr. P. ordered off the cuff not from the set menu, which completely baffled the young black counter assistant!; the day Dr. Pearson telephoned Zach’s home and his brother Corey answered the phone and thought it was, and I quote “the King of England calling”! The day Dr. P. went for a lunch time drink with Zach and I in a bar near McPherson Square, and a lefty looking bloke with very long hair stood by us waiting to be served. Zach said to Dr. P. “what do you make of him”, to which Dr. P. replied “he’s probably a homosexual”! The day after Princess Diana died (I was at work even though it was a Sunday): Dr. P. and I went out for lunch near the White House and Yanks were coming up to us in the restaurant giving us their condolences, as if we knew her!

Of course, we had our ups and downs, but overall, I had six very enjoyable years working for Dr. Pearson, where I learnt not only how to run an efficient office (a well-oiled machine – you should see the H&D office now!), but so much more about race, eugenics, anthropology, history and American politics.

The last time I spoke to him was shortly before Christmas. I think my phone call had woken him up from an afternoon nap, and it took a couple of minutes for him to realise who I was. But after that he was fine, and we had a good old natter, chatting about old times in DC and the political situation in the UK. He was still very sharp even at 95.

I will sorely miss Dr. Roger Pearson, he was one of a kind. And if there is a Valhalla, he will surely have a place there.

From chapter 8 of Fagrskinna, one of the kings’ sagas, written around 1220. The composition is by an anonymous author from the 10th century and is referred to as Eiríksmál, and describes Eric Bloodaxe and five other kings arriving in Valhalla after their death. The poem begins with comments by Odin (as Old Norse Óðinn):

“What kind of a dream is it,” said Óðinn,
“in which just before daybreak,
I thought I cleared Valhǫll,
for coming of slain men?
I waked the Einherjar,
bade valkyries rise up,
to strew the bench,
and scour the beakers,

Wine to carry,
as for a king’s coming,
here to me I expect
heroes’ coming from the world,
certain great ones,
so glad is my heart
.”

There will also be an obituary in a future issue of Heritage and Destiny magazine.

Udo Walendy: soldier, patriot and scholar (1927-2022)

Udo Walendy – German patriot and pioneering revisionist scholar and publisher – died last night aged 95. The following obituary is reposted from the Real History Blog.

Born in Berlin, he was among the last of the wartime generation, having served as a teenager in the Reich Labour Force, then as a Luftwaffe auxiliary, and finally as a soldier in the Wehrmacht, turning 18 less than four months before the end of the war.

After an early career in education and business, Udo became one of the very first pioneers of revisionist history, publishing the first edition of his book Wahrheit für Deutschland – Die Schuldfrage des Zweiten Weltkriegs (‘Truth for Germany: the guilt question of the Second World War’) in 1964, a decade before the 1970s explosion of revisionist scholarship. This book appeared in many subsequent editions in several languages.

Among his most significant contributions to that scholarship was his long-running series Historische Tatsachen, published latterly by Siegfried Verbeke’s VHO in Flanders.

A major figure on the international revisionist scene, Udo was a long-time board member of the Institute for Historical Review (IHR), and was a witness at both of the groundbreaking trials of Canadian-German revisionist publisher Ernst Zündel, in 1985 and 1988.

When the NPD was formed in 1964 as the main nationalist party in what was then West Germany, Udo Walendy became one of its first members, serving on the party’s federal executive from 1967-73, and as state chairman of the NPD in North-Rhine-Westphalia from 1971-73.

In 1996-97 Udo Walendy served prison sentences under Germany’s notorious debate-denying Volksverhetzung law, and was prosecuted on many other occasions, as well as suffering frequent official harassment and the seizure of his books and magazines.

Until his eyesight failed in his final years, Udo Walendy remained extremely active as a revisionist and as a patriot, standing as mayoral candidate for the NPD in his home city of Mönchengladbach in 2014, when he was already aged 87.

The last of the wartime generation are leaving us, as are many of the pioneering revisionist generation of the 1960s and 1970s. The great intellectual adventure of our times (as Robert Faurisson called it) continues, as the torch is passed to new revisionist leaders such as Vincent Reynouard, now battling extradition to France where a new prison sentence would await him, and then on to a new generation of brave and articulate European intellectuals.

The truth – or as Professor Faurisson preferred to put it, “exactitude” – will never be silenced. Wahrheit macht Frei!

How and why the National Front began its march to the Cenotaph

Today military veterans, politicians, religious leaders and other VIPs will lay wreaths at the Cenotaph in Whitehall, and at other war memorials throughout the United Kingdom, in memory of the men and women from Britain and her Empire who gave their lives during the wars of the 20th and 21st centuries.

More than half a century ago, in the early days of the National Front, the NF began a tradition of holding a separate march to the Cenotaph, followed by a wreath-laying ceremony. Ill-informed observers might think that this was in poor taste – an attempt by the NF to politicise an event that ought to be above politics.

In fact the opposite is the case.

A.K. Chesterton, who later became founding Chairman of the National Front

The NF under its founding chairman A.K. Chesterton (who had himself been awarded the Military Cross for his actions during the Battle of Épehy in September 1918) began this tradition not in order to exploit it for partisan purposes, but as a response to the late 1960s’ Labour government’s politicisation of Remembrance Sunday.

Ever since Remembrance commemorations began in 1919, they had always been a memorial not only to servicemen and women from the British Isles, but from the whole of the British Empire.

After the Rhodesian government of Prime Minister Ian Smith declared independence in 1965, Harold Wilson’s Labour government in London employed a range of vindictive policies (including economic sanctions) aiming to force the Rhodesians into submission.

This Rhodesian postcard was recently unearthed by propagandopolis.com who suggested it was issued soon after UDI, but H&D suspects it dates from the summer of 1967 when Rhodesians and British patriots began to organise defiance of the British government’s ban on their presence at the Cenotaph.

Eventually this included banning Rhodesian veterans from Remembrance Sunday events at the Cenotaph. (There had already for more than twenty years been a calculated decision to shun veterans of Britain’s 1945-48 war against Jewish terrorists. British Palestine veterans were not banned from the Cenotaph, but until very recent years they were given no official recognition and had to organise their own memorial events.)

Not only Rhodesians themselves, but their comrades from across the Empire (including the British Isles) were outraged by this insult.

Future Rhodesian Prime Minister Ian Smith, seen here in 1943 as a young RAF officer, suffered serious injuries during the Second World War. Yet in the late 1960s Britain’s left-wing government banned Smith and other Rhodesians from the Cenotaph ceremony.

H&D‘s assistant editor Peter Rushton has recently discovered letters from the 1960s which explain how pro-Rhodesian Britons (including several very well known war heroes) planned their response in defiance of the Labour Party – a response which eventually led to the NF beginning its tradition of marching to the Cenotaph.

The full story will be told in the January edition of Heritage and Destiny.

Today H&D readers will join British and Commonwealth citizens around the world in remembering the dead of 20th and 21st century wars – regardless of their political views and regardless of which part of the Empire they came from, we will remember them.

In addition to the Whitehall ceremony, British nationalists attend war memorials across the UK to pay tribute to the fallen. Here two elected borough councillors, H&D editor Mark Cotterill and Michael Johnson, lead one such delegation in Lancashire in 2006.

100 years ago today: how Mussolini’s March on Rome saved Italy

Those Italians and fellow Europeans who dare to defy the liberal-left’s tyrannical rewriting of history are today celebrating the centenary of the March on Rome, when Benito Mussolini and his Fascisti saved Italy from communism and chaos.

In 2022 even a former fascist such as new Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni feels obliged to denounce the Duce. But H&D thought our readers might be interested to learn what British journalists who knew Italy well were writing about the March on Rome and Mussolini’s seizure of power back in 1922 – before postwar brainwashing made it impossible for the mainstream press to write anything truthful about fascism or national socialism.

The Daily Telegraph wrote:
“In spite of the late disquieting rumours about Italy, there is no more pleasant country to stay in! After visiting the distressed states of Central Europe, it is a real and vivid joy to come to the smiling land of olive and cypress tree! Within her kingdom one is struck by her prosperity, her insouciance, her comfort, and, at least, the outward security of the country…
“Italy has troubles of her own, but, thanks to the Fascisti, who have restored law and order, there is peace. How much this state of affairs is due to the Fascisti is perhaps not fully realised; nor is their strength, their effective organisation, and the extent of their influence possibly appreciated or understood. In the opinion of most enlightened Italians they have not only been instrumental in repressing Socialist risings, but have saved the country from complete chaos, if not ruin!
“…Under the leadership of Count Mussolini, the admirable organisation known as the ‘Fascisti’ became a greater power than the powerful Socialists themselves. The strength of the Fascisti lies in their enthusiasm, their quiet determination, and the youthful backing of the country. There is scarcely a young man between the ages of 18 and 25 who is not a Fascist. Their policy is one of secrecy, of promptness: they are always on the spot and ready to spring when necessary.”

Similarly the Daily Mail reported:
“All the world has heard of the Fascisti – yet few people outside Italy have any precise knowledge of the mighty organisation which, created only a little more than two years ago, has reconquered Italy for the Italians, in a new Risorgimento which in a sense is a pendant and completion of the movement of the 1860s.
“There are more than a million declared and organised Fascisti in Italy today – and few of them are over 30. …700,000 of these Fascisti are workmen who have seceded from the virulently anti-patriotic Communist-controlled trade unions – for, as the revolutionaries have been unpleasantly reminded, even workmen prefer to be allowed to love, and be proud of, their native country.
“…At the elections in 1919 Fascismo was scarcely born. Now it is master of the country, and yet it is unrepresented in Parliament. The Fascisti said: ‘Give us the new elections which will return us to power – or like Caesar and his legionaries, we will cross the Rubicon and march on Rome.’
“The glory of ancient Rome is indeed their dream, and their army is modelled on the ancient legions. It is a fighting force of something like 300,000, apart from the 700,000 workmen enrolled in the Fascisti trade unions.”

That fighting force transformed Italy, and Mussolini’s two decades in power remain a golden age in his country’s history.

Pro-terrorist march halted

A gang of apologists for IRA terrorism was due to march through Glasgow today, commemorating the communist International Brigades, ending in a rally at the statue of arch-Stalinist Dolores Ibárurri.

A decade ago the same organisation attempted to march in Liverpool – readers with long memories might recall that H&D was involved in helping mobilising opposition to this Liverpool march. The outcome was that the pro-IRA marchers and their “anti-fascist” friends were literally smashed off the city’s streets. One anti-fascist online journal commented bitterly: “a gang of around two hundred fascists mobilised in the city centre, running amok, and forcing the Irish Republican Flute Band off the streets, before going on to hassle Occupy supporters on an anti-police brutality protest. This was a serious defeat for Liverpool activists, and it is vital that this is acknowledged, so that we can stop it happening again in the future.”

Loyalist demonstrators smashed a similar rally by the same organisers a decade ago

In Glasgow, local patriots had again mobilised to oppose today’s march, and the city’s police have decided they would in present circumstances be incapable of protecting the marchers: consequently they have banned the entire event under Section 12 of the Public Order Act.

Predictably “anti-fascists” and Fenians are whining about their “rights”. The video below shows police enforcing the ban today and protecting those Fenians who showed up.

Perhaps some of their Catholic friends might explain to this gang of terror apologists that the Spanish Republican forces backed by their International Brigade ‘heroes’ slaughtered nuns and priests?

But for today’s Sinn Fein / IRA and their backers, Catholic identity is merely a figleaf for their agenda of terrorist blackmail, which (in their dreams) would lead to Ulster’s surrender.

Loyalists in Glasgow as well as Ulster, and in towns and cities throughout the United Kingdom, will never allow this surrender agenda to succeed.

Colin Jordan, Richard Edmonds and John Tyndall Memorial Meeting – Preston – Sunday 25th September – update

A quick heads up to all subscribers and readers. Heritage and Destiny will be holding a Colin Jordan / Richard Edmonds / John Tyndall Memorial Meeting in the Preston area on the afternoon of Sunday 25th September (12 noon – 5.30 pm).

Details so far:

Meeting Chairman will be Keith Axon – a former NF and BNP organizer, and longstanding friend of both John Tyndall and Richard Edmonds

Speakers so far include (in alphabetical order):

Benny Bullman – lead singer of the RAC band Whitelaw, joint host (with Steve Frost) of the Under the Sunwheel British National Socialist podcast, and longstanding British Movement activist

Stephen Frost – National Secretary of the British Movement, longstanding friend of CJ, and author of the Colin Jordan biography ‘TWAS A GOOD FIGHT’!

Julie Lake – a former BNP & NF regional organiser, now Independent Nationalist candidate for Bristol West

Dr. James Lewthwaite – a former BNP Bradford City Councillor, archaeology lecturer, current Chairman of the British Democrats and Orangeman

Peter Rushton – Assistant Editor of Heritage and Destiny magazine, historian, blogger & TV commentator

Laura Towler – Deputy Leader of Patriotic Alternative, has written for Counter-Currents and Defend Europa, and currently lives in Yorkshire with her husband and daughter

Other guest speakers – including at least one from overseas – will be announced closer to the day of the meeting – keep checking our website for more details.

If you wish to attend, please call our office number – 07833 677484 – or Email – heritageanddestiny@yahoo.com – for full details and directions to the venue which will be in the Preston area.

Doors open at 12 noon and meeting will start at 12.30pm prompt. However, can you please aim to get to Preston for between 11.15am – 11.45am as we will have two re-direction points (one for those coming by car and the other for those using public transport) in operation and we want to get everybody to the meeting venue in plenty of time.

There will be literature/merchandise tables from a number of different nationalist groups at the meeting. If you or your group would like a free merchandise table to sell your wares at the meeting, please contact us ASAP as space is now limited.

We also need more raffle prizes, so if you have anything you can donate to the raffle (or auction) please let us know – or just bring it along on the day.

There will be a buffet (including vegetarian); cash-bar; raffle (with some great prizes), auction and much more. So, make sure you, your family and friends are free Sunday 25th September and get yourselves over to Preston!

Those of you are coming by train/coach, please book up well in advance, or else all the cheap seats will be gone. Likewise, if you need overnight accommodation in Preston, book now to get the best deals (call our office for advice if necessary). We understand that several of meeting attendees are staying in nearby Blackpool/Fylde coast this year, where there is a far greater choice of B&B and hotel accommodation, so you may want to bear that in mind. If you are flying in the nearest airports are Manchester and Liverpool, both have direct trains to Preston.

There will be two socials – one on the Saturday evening for those arriving the day before – and one after the meeting has finished on the Sunday evening. We have a great venue, which serves real ales and great food at very reasonable prices.

If for whatever reason, you cannot attend the meeting, but would like to send a donation, to help with the meeting costs instead, that would be great. Please send cheques/postal/money orders (made payable to Heritage and Destiny) to – H&D, 40 Birkett Drive, Preston, PR2 6HE, or you can donate by BACS (Bank Transfer) to; Account name – Heritage and Destiny, Account number – 14144034, Sort code – 01 00 85: – Use your name and the words “memorial meeting” as reference.

Another defeat for London Holocaust Memorial plan – is it time to scrap the scheme?

The vast ‘Holocaust Memorial’ which has now been rejected three times by planning authorities and courts, but which the British Government still insists on promoting

Vastly expensive plans for a huge Holocaust memorial in London, next to the Houses of Parliament and Westminster Abbey, have suffered another defeat after the Court of Appeal refused to hear the case.

In April this year the High Court blocked the plans, and this week an appeal by the UK Holocaust Memorial Foundation fell at the first hurdle.

Former prime minister David Cameron launched the plan in 2014 by appointing a Holocaust Commission which reported the following year, recommending a prominent new memorial with attached “learning centre”. The plan soon acquired cross-party support and in July 2016 Victoria Tower Gardens – a park adjacent to Parliament – was chosen as the site.

Architects David Adjaye and Ron Arad were chosen for the project. Their initial budget of £50 million has since risen to a current estimate of £102.9 million.

In 2019 Westminster City Council’s planning authority rejected the proposal. The two leading politicians who co-chaired the project – Conservative Lord Pickles and Labour’s Ed Balls – wrote to the council complaining that planning officers were “giving excessive weight to the number of objections lodged on the planning portal”.

These objections lodged with the council included a detailed report by H&D‘s assistant editor Peter Rushton (who now also writes the Real History Blog). His report to Westminster City Council was based on detailed research into the planning history of the original London Holocaust memorial in the 1980s – click here to read.

The late Richard Edmonds recorded a film with Lady Michèle Renouf on the site of the proposed memorial. Click here to view this film.

Foreign Secretary Lord Carrington with Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher. Carrington, who had won the Military Cross for his bravery during the Second World War, wrote of the original plans for a London Holocaust Memorial: “The whole idea is preposterous”.

Government ministers sought to override Westminster Council by appointing a Whitehall inspector who recommended acceptance of the plan. Housing minister Chris Pincher officially approved the scheme in July 2021. (Pincher has since been disgraced after a series of alcohol-fuelled sexual assaults on young men; his downfall led to the recent resignation of Prime Minister Boris Johnson.)

In April this year Mrs Justice Thornton in the High Court ruled that Pincher had acted unlawfully, because Victoria Tower Gardens is protected by a statute dating back to 1900 which specifically prevents it being used as anything other than a garden open to the public.

This week the Court of Appeal ruled that there was no realistic prospect of the High Court judgment being overturned, so it would not hear the case. “There is no real prospect of successfully arguing that the judge’s construction of the 1900 Act was wrong… On the contrary, it was plainly correct.”

The Appeal Court judges rebuked the Holocaust Memorial Foundation for arguing that objectors to the proposal should not have been allowed to raise one of their successful legal points: “It is extremely unattractive for the losing party to argue that his opponent should not have been allowed to introduce a legal argument that turned out to be correct.”

In a typically shameless and arrogant gesture, government minister Paul Scully and Holocaust Educational Trust chief executive Karen Pollock insisted this week that they still support the project, despite it now having been rejected three times – by city council planners, the High Court, and the Court of Appeal.

Lord Pickles, seen here with former Prime Minister Theresa May, is co-chairman of the Holocaust memorial project. He also advocates introducing a law to ban “Holocaust denial” in the UK.

H&D understands that the only realistic possibility of forcing through the project now would be for the government to introduce legislation (which would have to be passed by both Houses of Parliament) repealing the 1900 law and allowing Victoria Tower Gardens to be used for something other than a park.

If such a law is proposed, we shall use this as an opportunity for a long-overdue debate on the whole principle of whether London should be forced to have a vastly expensive Holocaust memorial. Such a debate must ask the central questions:
What was the ‘Holocaust’?
What did British intelligence and British ministers know (or think they knew) about the ‘Holocaust’ during the 1940s, and what was the factual basis for their knowledge?
What was the relationship between international Jewish organisations and the British war effort, including propaganda and subversive warfare organisations?

If the British taxpayer is expected to pay more than £100 million, and sacrifice a large chunk of the nation’s capital city, to memorialise the ‘Holocaust’, then we have a right to expect answers to these questions.

Sir Henry Wilson honoured on centenary of his murder

Field Marshal Sir Henry Wilson (1864-1922)

A great British hero was belatedly honoured this week, a century after his murder, by the unveiling of a plaque at the House of Commons and a ceremony at Liverpool Street railway station.

Field Marshal Sir Henry Wilson was shot dead by IRA assassins outside his home in Eaton Place, Belgravia on 22nd June 1922. Two hours earlier – in full uniform but armed only with a ceremonial sword – he had unveiled a war memorial at Liverpool Street, and had no police or other bodyguards on his return.

Wilson had served the British Empire in various quarters of the globe. For most of his life he bore severe facial scars incurred when (armed only with a bamboo cane) he tackled axe-wielding bandits in Burma.

And his political courage was equal to his physical courage. At the start of 1914 he was one of the most prominent of the senior officers prepared to defy Asquith’s Liberal government when it was prepared to betray Ulster to Irish ‘Home Rulers’. Wilson and others made it clear that if (or rather when) Ulstermen resisted such betrayal, the British Army would not be prepared to take up arms against patriots in order to deliver a political surrender to traitors.

The ensuing ‘Curragh Incident’ or ‘Mutiny at the Curragh’ prevented such a betrayal (although more recent governments in London have done their best to complete the sell-out).

Crowds line the streets for Sir Henry Wilson’s state funeral

In 1921 Lloyd George’s postwar coalition government suddenly resumed a policy of surrendering the Union to Irish terrorists. Wilson – though at that stage a soldier rather than a ‘democratic’ politician – was regarded as the possible leader of a ‘real’ Conservative opposition, and in preparation for such a role he became an MP for the Ulster constituency of North Down.

Despite (or perhaps because of) his own distinguished war record, Wilson was no ‘Little Englander’, but a bold visionary: a staunch defender of both the Union and the Empire, but someone with close ties to European leaders including the French and Spanish governments, and an advocate of a merciful and rational peace with the recently defeated Germans.

A year before his murder, Wilson had a private meeting with King Alfonso of Spain where they discussed the possibility of an Anglo-Spanish alliance (to be the basis of a broader European alliance) against the growing power of the USA. Unlike the rabid Germanophobes who infested the Foreign Office, he viewed Germany as a crucial potential ally and bulwark against the aggressive schemes of newly Bolshevised Russia.

In 1922, it would not be unreasonable to view Sir Henry Wilson as a potential British Mussolini (who became Italian Prime Minister four months after Wilson’s assassination) or Miguel Primo de Rivera (who came to power in Spain in September 1923, backed by King Alfonso): someone who in the national and imperial interest was prepared to sweep aside shabby parliamentary manoeuvres and compromises. Or what his enemies would have viewed as a potential ‘dictator’. In fact arguably the only realistic potential ‘dictator’ Britain ever had during the 20th century.

So it’s not surprising that there have been many ‘conspiracy theories’ about Wilson’s death.

A wreath laid at Liverpool St station this week by Ulster Loyalists in memory of a great British hero

Many (then and now) suspected that the notoriously unscrupulous Prime Minister Lloyd George and his cronies were happy to see his assassination.

What we do know is that two IRA assassins were lurking at the street corner as the Field Marshal’s taxi approached his home. Their first shot missed. Then, as one of Wilson’s biographers Basil Collier puts it:
“At that point he made a brave man’s blunder. He could have run into the house and saved his life. He might even have scared the men away by shouting at the top of his voice…But he was still the Henry Wilson who had faced the bandits in Burma with a stick. He did not retreat into the house. He did not shout for help. He drew his sword and faced his enemies. They fired again quickly. Then seeing him fall, they ran away. He tried to speak as he was lifted up, but the words would not come. In a few minutes it was over. A man who understood him wrote his epitaph when he said that even in his death, he showed he was a soldier.”

A new biography of Wilson has just been published, and will soon be reviewed in Heritage and Destiny.

Today we salute the memory of a Great Briton.

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