Extremes of Faith and Nation: British Fascism and Christianity

Extremes of Faith and Nation: British Fascism andChristianity

Paul Jackson*University of Northampton

Abstract

This article surveys the relationship between British fascism and religion in both the interwar andpostwar periods. After identifying a fascist tradition in Britain by drawing on the theories of ‘newconsensus’ scholars, it highlights how various fascists organisations and ideologues have developedreligious dimensions to their politics. From the British Fascists who presented themselves asdefenders of Christianity, to the Imperial Fascist League which used religion to legitimise its anti-Semitism, to Oswald Mosey who developed his own political religion, interwar fascists arerevealed as figures who used a spiritual politics as a marker of national identity. Postwar fascistssuch as John Tyndall and Colin Jordan are shown to be more critical of religion. Meanwhile, theBritish National Party has developed a new politics around faith and Christian identity, which isalso now steeped in Islamopobia. Therefore, the article concludes that the relationship betweenBritish fascism and religion has a complex history and is highly relevant contemporary trends inBritish fascism.

In the run-up to the 2009 European elections, in which the British National Party gaineda breakthrough vote, the party considered running a national poster campaign featuring aquotation from the Bible – ‘If they have persecuted me, they will also persecute you’,John 15:20 – and asked the rhetorical question ‘What would Jesus do?’ While creating asmall media flurry, this elision between the latest incarnation of British fascism and Chris-tianity is nothing new for those well read in fascist studies. Indeed, the role of religion infascism is complex. Christian themes are often deployed to construct a sense of nationalidentity, while other religions can be developed as demonized ‘others’. Recent develop-ments in political religion theory have also highlighted that fascism contains within itsideological makeup structural aspects of religion, combined with a radical ‘this worldly’political agenda, thus creating a secular faith (Gentile 2006). Focusing on Britain, this arti-cle explores the relationships between fascism and a national Christian heritage, highlight-ing how the ideology has moved beyond Christianity to develop a native politicalreligion. Christianity is largely a protestant phenomenon in British fascism, but, as we willsee, Catholicism is significant too. However, before discussing these themes in detail, it isworth briefly defining fascism and sketching out the history of British fascist organiza-tions.

Main Currents in British Fascism

In his authoritative A History of Fascism 1914–1945, Stanley Payne argues that interwarBritish fascism is an oxymoron, given its miniscule scale compared to continentalforms of the ideology (Payne 1997, pp. 303–5). Contrastingly, another of the ‘new con-sensus’ (Griffin 2002) theorists of generic fascism, Roger Griffin, stresses that the often

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marginalised, factional nature of British fascism is far more typical of the ideology. Theregimes of Fascist Italy and Nazi Germany were the exceptions, not British fascisms. Grif-fin therefore claims that the myriad structural forces that suppress a widespread take-up offascism mean that most forms of the ideology remain small scale and politically unsuccess-ful. Only in unusual and extreme circumstances do fascisms emerge as major politicalplayers (Griffin 1996).

Griffin is also one of the leading voices offering a heuristically useful definition offascism, presented by him as a form of populist, ‘palingenetic’ (or revolutionary) ultra-nationalism (Griffin 1993, 2007). Unpacking this often-cited definition, we can see that,first, by developing a populist agenda, the ideology seeks to tap into the everydayconcerns of people, especially those who feel alienated from mainstream society; second,it seeks a fundamental reordering of the state and society, to achieve a sense of rebirth(palingenesis literally translates as ‘again birth’) and spiritual renewal; and finally, it devel-ops an extreme form of nationalism that is diametrically opposed to the nationalisms ofliberal democracy, which allow space for pluralism and difference. Contrastingly, fascistnationalism seeks to achieve a mythic sense of ethnic purity. Others, including RogerEatwell (2003), have offered similar definitions, emphasising that fascism is ultimately arevolutionary form of extreme nationalism. Since the First World War, many parties andmovements in Britain conform to this definition.

So, armed with a clear definition of fascism, we can briefly document some of thesefascist organisations in Britain since the First World War. The development of extremenationalism in modern Britain has taken a number of forms. For example, the BritonsPublishing Society, founded by Henry Hamilton Beamish in 1918, disseminated muchseditious material useful to British fascists. It lasted until 1948, remaining a minute debat-ing society obsessed with anti-Semitism (Lunn 1980). Meanwhile, the British Fascists,formed in 1923 by Rotha Lintorn-Orman, were the first consciously ‘Fascist’ group inBritain. Although lacking a clear revolutionary drive, the thrust of British Fascist ideologyprimarily advocated a return to a paternalistic monarchy rather than a modern totalitariandictatorship. Nevertheless, this clearly far-right organisation was a significant precursor tomore mature forms of fascism in Britain.

By the later 1920s, there were a number of fascist organisations in Britain, splitting offfrom the BF. The most important of these was Arnold Leese’s Imperial Fascist League,created in 1929. The IFL was again a small-scale organisation, though unlike the BF itdeveloped a far more coherent fascist ideology. Indeed, Leese was a virulent anti-Semite,probably the most articulate protagonist of biological anti-Semitism in interwar Britain.He conceived of IFL less as a political party and more an organisation dedicated to creat-ing an elite of ‘Jew-wise’ anti-Semitic propagandists capable of spreading the message ofthe alleged Jewish threat to Britain and the Nordic race. Later in the 1930s, other smallfascist and far-right groupings developed. These included the Militant Christian Patriots,the National Socialist League, and the White Knights of Britain, which were coordinatedto an extent by the Nordic League, itself run by another prominent anti-Semite, MauleRamsey MP.

The most significant interwar fascist party was the British Union of Fascists, led byOswald Mosley. In the 1920s, Mosley had been a Conservative, then Labour MP, beforeresigning in 1932, railing against what he decried as the ‘old gang’ of politicians. Afterfounding the electorally disastrous New Party, based on continental fascism, in 1931,Mosey went on to create the BUF in late 1932. The relative success of Mosley’s BUFwas partly because it initially received a fair wind from the Rothermere press, and gaineda membership high of 50 000. However, following violence at a mass rally at London’s

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Kensington Olympia in 1934, it became indelibly associated with continental extremismin the public imagination. Its policies after this point turned increasingly to anti-Semitismin a bid to find new areas of support, though with limited results. Unlike the clearlybiological racism of Leese and his followers, the BUF’s anti-Semitism emphasised theallegedly negative cultural aspects of Judaism, rather than degeneration of the Nordic racethrough complex pseudo-biological arguments. With the outbreak of the Second WorldWar, Mosley argued against confrontation with Nazi Germany, claiming this was a‘Jew war’. In 1940, he along with many other leading British fascists such as Leese andRamsey were interned, crushing British fascism.

Following the war, Mosley tried to revive his political fortunes by founding the largelyunsuccessful Union Movement in 1948. While Mosley’s influence waned, Leese’s morevirulent strain of biological anti-Semitism grew in influence. In the 1950s, under thestewardship of A. K. Chesterton’s League of Empire Loyalists (LEL), a new generation ofBritish fascist activists emerged, including Colin Jordan and John Tyndall, who looked toLeese’s ideas over Mosley’s. The 1960s saw the growth of a number of small-scale fascistgroupings, including the National Labour Party, the White Defence League, the NationalSocialist Movement and the Greater Britain Movement. In 1967, the LEL and the BNPmerged to form a new, more significant fascist movement, the National Front, whichwas also soon joined by Tyndall’s GMB. In 1968, the new NF was given a boost by thenotorious ‘Rivers of Blood’ speech by Conservative MP Enoch Powell and capitalised onEdward Heath’s relatively liberal immigration policies in the early 1970s. Based on therising fears of black and Asian immigration, this new wave of British fascism reached ahigh point in the 1979 general election. Looking forward, the NF was hopeful of anational breakthrough, though the more hard-line immigration stance of MargretThatcher helped to remove the political space carved out by the NF in the 1970s.

Blamed by many for the FN’s electoral failure, in 1982, Tyndall founded a new BritishNational Party. Imbued with Tyndall’s uncompromising fascist rhetoric, the party experi-enced a brief electoral success in 1993, winning a local council seat on the Isle of Dogs.However, Tyndall’s notorious past was indelibly associated with Nazi imagery, hamperingthe party from achieving widespread support. Meanwhile, a splinter group, Combat 18,emerged in 1992 which developed links with several football ‘firms’ and paramilitaryLoyalists in Northern Ireland. In 1999, the BNP had its first leadership election, withNick Griffin emerging the victor. Having previously denied Nazi genocide, Griffin nowstyled himself as a more moderate, former Holocaust denier. His leadership has tried toremove from the public imagination the party’s roots in anti-Semitic and racist politics.Its greatest breakthrough was the 2009 European elections, though the BNP has alsodone well in council elections, largely by developing a local politics that can appeal tothose who feel disconnected from mainstream political affairs (Goodwin 2008). Copsey(2008) has given the most sustained history of the party to date, clearly revealing thefascist and anti-Semitic roots of the BNP’s ideology.

Although far from comprehensive, we can see from this whirlwind survey that therehave been a number of fascist groupings in Britain. Further, these parties have also oftentried to develop a sense of Christian identity, and it is to these complex links betweenfascist politics and Christian identity that we now turn.

Interwar British Fascism and Christianity

The link between Christian identity and patriotism is often seen as axiomatic for Britishfascists. For the first openly fascist organisation, the British Fascists, the link between

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extreme patriotism and Christian identity was integral. Richard Griffiths (1983) analysisdraws this out, highlighting that the BF wrote into its manifesto that members had todemonstrate their British parentage and clarify that they were of a Christian Creed. Fur-ther, as Barbara Storm Farr has shown, the party offered a sustained attempt to promoteChristian values, part of a wider politics promoting Empire and monarchy.

To take one example of this, we can look at the BF’s attempts to educate children.Like many forms of nascent fascism, the antithesis of ultra-nationalism was the revolution-ary atheism of Marxism. Further, for many British Fascists, the rise of Marxism was seenas a part of the wider issue of increased secularisation within British society. To help fightthe BF’s self-styled war against communism, in 1925, the party developed its own FascistChildren’s Clubs which were designed as a counterpoint to the influence of Marxism.Demonstrating the centrality of Christianity to the British Fascists, the motto for theseclubs was ‘Fear God, honour the King’. Meanwhile, a five-verse Fascist Children’s Creedwas produced, which began as follows:

I am a Fascist. I believe in God, the FatherAlmighty, and in Jesus Christ His only Son Our Lord,and in the Holy Spirit. I believe that Christianity is theonly hope of the human race.

And concluded thus:

I am a Fascist. I believe in one empire, one flag, oneCrown, and solemnly affirm that my allegiance toGod, King and country comes before any otherinterest.

Farr describes this creed as combining ‘the ideals of religion, scouting and super-patriotism’, highlighting how the British Fascists ‘used repetitious drill’ to develop ‘almosta doxology’ with which to instil their ideals into young minds (Farr 1987, p. 74). Theritualistic elision of religion and ideology was thus woven into the party’s approach topolitics. Meanwhile, in September 1930, the party’s journal, British Fascism, made clearthat the movement embraced all Christian denominations, part of a wider commonstruggle against atheistic communism: ‘It is fallacious and small-minded to contend that‘‘religion has nothing to do with politics’’’, the article declared, and continued thus: ‘orthat ‘‘to drag Christianity into Fascism it to confuse the issue.’’ There can be no trueFascism that is not Christian, for Fascism is militant Christianity’.1 The integral linkbetween Christianity and British Fascist identity is clear from such statements, thoughunlike Mosley below, here we see an embrace of Christianity by fascism, rather than thecreation of a new political religion.

Aside from fascist ideologues using fascism to defend Britain’s protestant tradition,Catholicism also had a role to play in the relationship between British fascism andreligion. Among the leading fascists in Britain during the 1920s, James Strachey Barnes,Secretary-General of international think-tank on fascism the Centre Internationald’Etudes sur la Fascisme (CINEF), offers a clear example of this trend. Writing two bookson fascism and a number of publications in right-wing journals, Barnes’ fascism lamentedthe Reformation in Britain and claimed that the spirit of an authentic England lay in theCatholic Middle Ages. Fascism alone could create a new era where the spiritual dynamicof this earlier age would be combined with a modern politics, thus offering its followersa spiritual awakening to escape from modern capitalism and its promotion of decadentmaterialism. This emphasis on fascism’s ostensible religious legitimacy helped to develop

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the ideology’s theoretical credibility for a British audience, an aspect of the movementnot extensively promoted by other fascists in Britain during the 1920s (Linehan 2000, pp.128–30).

Meanwhile, the Imperial Fascist League took a more secular stance to its politics. Inthe booklet Mightier Yet! Back to Reality: The Policy of the Imperial Fascist League Outlined,we find a clear articulation of the movement’s attitude towards Christianity. The IFLcalled for unity among Christians and recognised that the British people found muchcomfort in Christianity. Therefore, Mightier Yet! stated that ‘As Fascists, we desire Unity,and so religion is not discussed at any of our meetings’. However, as one reads more, thepicture becomes increasingly muddled. Leese’s IFL did call for what it dubbed ‘the truth’to be told about the ‘old Mesopotamian civilisations’. Allegedly, this ‘truth’ was that they‘are now proved to have been founded and developed by Nordic people like ourselves...We now know that neither monotheism nor the idea of a future life were anything butNordic in their origin, since initiated and often perverted by Jews and other lesser breadsof men’. Having made this powerful claim for the Nordic people, Leese’s booklet contin-ued: ‘These are facts of historical record, not of religion. It is not our fault that some ofthese facts clash with the Old Testament of the Jews; but they do, and in attacking whatis false in that book we attack nothing which is Christian’.2 This refraction of Christianitythrough the lens of extreme anti-Semitism was a strong trend in IFL thinking, whichneeded to engage with aspects of religious history to frame and contextualise itsanti-Semitism. For the extreme anti-Semite, being able to make clear distinctionsbetween the influences of a healthy ‘Nordic’ culture, and a nefarious ‘Jewish’ one, wasvital. Therefore, although not pursued for devotional reasons, Christianity was clearlybeing claimed by the IFL as a marker of British identity.

While the contrasting approaches of the British Fascists, Barnes and the IFL show ushow interwar British fascism tried to defend a Christian Britain from Communists andJews, the larger BUF offers a more complex case. Here, British fascists not only identifiedthemselves as Christian, but the clergy took up the fascist cause via the BUF. Indeed,Thomas Linehan has discussed in some depth the link between the BUF and lowerclergy. This was part of a much wider, European trend for conservative religious figuresto forge close links with fascism and the far-right at this time (Feldman and Turda eds.,2008). To generalise, the BUF’s discourse on religion emphasised how the party wouldmove away from the secularisation and materialism of liberalism, and, through a corporatestate, restore a sense of spiritual faith to mankind. By recreating, in a modernised form,the spiritual structures that allegedly held together the social world of the Middle Ages,the ideology argued that it would be able to redeem modern Britain from elementalspiritual decay. Such an emphasis towards the spiritual could hold an appeal to moreradical figures within the lower clergy.

To give some examples of some of the more vocal of these fascist clergy, we can turnfirstly to Reverend A. Palmer. Writing for the BUF, he claimed that ‘he [Jesus Christ]incorporated all in the Corporate State of His Church’, and argued that Jesus was‘the greatest Dictator’, living a life of ‘sacrifice, service, loyalty and discipline’. Another,Reverend Ellis G. Roberts claimed Mosley’s BUF was ‘essentially a religious movement’both because of its opposition to bolshevism and because it emphasised a sense of duty toits members. Reverend G. W. H. Webb, meanwhile, claimed that as Christianityflourished under the dictatorship of the Roman Empire and found its highest form in the‘corporate state’ of the Middle Ages, the totalitarian state proposed by fascism was entirelycompatible with Christianity. The BUF was simply operating in a tradition of stronggovernment defending Christian principles. On the compatibility between corporatism



and religion, the Reverend H. E. B. Nye even argued that it was liberalism, not fascism,that was incompatible with true Christianity. For Nye, ‘In the Christian Church the indi-vidual is a member of the Divine Body, his duty is to that Body; he is constantlyreminded that he owes his own life to the fact of his union with other members underone Divine Head’. From this position, Nye argued that liberalism emphasised privatethoughts and a multiplicity of attitudes towards life, thereby promoting fragmentation andultimately a decline in religion. An authoritarian state that urged people to accept the tra-ditions of Christianity, as he saw them at least, would counter this sense of decline andreverse the moral anarchy of modernity. Finally, like other BUF-sympathising clergy,Nye was also vocal on the Spanish Civil War, seeing here the causes of Christianity andfascism coming together. However, making up a tiny minority within the church duringthe interwar period, Linehan has concluded that the ‘new organic form brought to birthby the rhetoric of the BUF clerics was merely a representation of Christianity, a mutilatedversion of Christian belief...’ (2007). It also shows us how a traditional religion couldaccommodate the main precepts of fascist ideology, but could the BUF’s fascism accom-modate traditional Christianity?

Aside from this interest from a small sector of the clergy, leading BUF figures also pro-moted visions of a corporate state by using religious themes. Later to become leader ofthe League of Empire Loyalists and first chairman of the National Front, the prominentBUF figure A. K. Chesterton echoed the idea that the Middle Ages represented a moreharmonious era for state and society. Broadly similar to themes of French Integralism,according to Chesterton, the role of Catholic Church and the nobility of this periodpresented a clear model for the new corporate state to follow. The need to secure a newsocial system based on the same style of unquestioned religious principles was central tothe BUF’s revolutionary project. As Chesterton put it, British fascism would seek togenerate a secular version of the ‘Christian ethos that in order to have a life man mustlose it... surrender it to the commonwealth’ (Baker 1996, p. 171). With both Chestertonand the clerical fascists, we can see a common theme: historicising the movement byproposing a grand narrative of the decline of a religious order by liberal democracy andenlightenment values, which needed to be re-created in a modernised format to regener-ate the modern world. However, Chesterton’s approach, essentially creating a politicalreligion out of a secularised version of Christianity, offers us a key distinction betweenhim and the clerical fascists. Chesterton’s more secular vision drew on the structures ofreligion to create a more ‘this worldly’ vision of change – a political religion – whileclerical fascists argued fascism would defend a traditional religion.

Meanwhile, for Mosley, the BUF’s ideology was not directly compatible withChristian thinking, but Christianity was an important aspect within his British fascism.He too developed his own political religion by fusing Christian thought with moreradical thinkers of the age. Nietzschean philosophy especially highlighted the heroic andthe need to develop a will-to-power which could cut against the grain of the Christiantradition. Therefore, although he welcomed the influence of Christianity on the social lifeof the country – for example, its promotion of the spiritual over the material in themodern, secularising world – he was also critical. Consequently, he tried to combineNietzsche and Christianity into a new ‘synthesis’. In the first issue of the more intellectualorgan of the BUF, Fascist Quarterly, he described this ‘synthesis’ thus:

On the one hand you find in Fascism, taken from Christianity, taken directly from the Chris-tian conception, the immense vision of service, of self-abnegation, of self-sacrifice in the causeof others, in the cause of the world, in the cause of your country; not the elimination of the

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individual, so much as the elevation of the individual in something far greater than himself;and you have that basic doctrine of Fascism – service, self-surrender – to what the Fascist mustconceive to be the greatest cause and the greatest impulse in the world. On the other hand youfind taken from Nietzschean thought the virility, the challenge to all existing things whichimpede the March of mankind, the absolute abnegation of the doctrine of surrender; the firmability to grapple with and overcome all obstacles. You have, in fact, the creation of a doctrineof men of vigour and of self-help which is the other outstanding characteristic of Fascism(Mosley 1935, pp. 38–9).

Finally, during his internment in the Second World War, Mosley revealed to his son,Nicholas, that he had come to a new position regarding the place of religion within hisworldview. Musing on Goethe’s Faust in the light of this need to find a synthesisbetween Christianity and a Nietzschean philosophy of action, Mosley proposed that formsof evil were a necessary force in the world. From the struggle against evil, humanitywould ultimately create good, a sort of metaphysical alchemy (Skidelsky 1981, ch. 25).Again, theological speculation was used to legitimise his political extremism.

From this survey of the interwar fascists in Britain, it is clear that the Christian religionwas an important influence. However, it was often intermingled with contrary aspects offascist ideology to create myriad ‘new syntheses’, which could be used to help bolsterclaims that the coming fascist revolution would re-spiritualise the modern world. It is alsoworth stressing that, unlike, say, Italian Fascism, the role of the Church of England toBritish fascists was less significant than for continental counterparts. Thus, British fascistsdid not face the same pressures to either present their movement as a direct alternate toChristianity, or clearly stress how the ideology was compatible with church doctrine.These are both trends that can be found more strongly present in continental interwarfascisms and their relationships with Christian churches. Focusing on the British case,how did this relationship between Christianity and fascism develop in the postwar era?

Postwar British Fascism and Christianity

Within the postwar fascist organisations, Christian identity has also been a significanttheme, especially for the BNP. However, the intellectual capabilities of postwar Britishfascists have also been more limited, lacking the relative intellectual weight of Mosley.While Mosley could discourse convincingly on Nietzsche and other major thinkers, the1960s wave of British fascists were influenced by the cruder Leese tradition, and sotended to be far less erudite in their populist ultra-nationalism. With the new generationof fascist, represented here by the key figures of Tyndall and Jordan, we also see a lessChristian outlook, even rejection of Christianity.

To take some examples of the leading British fascists of this postwar generation, let usbegin with John Tyndall who ventured a far more critical outlook of Christianity. Forhim, the public discourse of the modern Anglican Church was clearly one of the centralforces of degeneration in Britain. His ranging, autobiographical tome outlining his politi-cal life and the need for a fascist revolution, The Eleventh Hour, A Call for British Rebirthis laced with examples of this critique of organised Christianity, claiming the churchsupported forms multiculturalism and plurality in society. For Tyndall’s mythic goalof national purity, such themes were antithetical to fascism. One quote typifies thisoutlook, which runs as follows:

...if those same people who sit and swallow the pigswill served up to them by means of a silverscreen should on a Sunday morning venture out to their local place of worship they will in all



probability receive a message from the pulpit which councils them in the virtues of marxism,pacifism, race suicide, national defencelessness and prayer for the mugger and the rapist – whilesaying almost nothing in support of the morals that lead to the rule of law, good health and thestability of home and family (Tyndall 1998, p. 588).

Here, the founder of the modern British National Party clearly links Christianity with allforces promoting social difference, claiming a sense of patriotic duty and socially conser-vative morality was denigrated by the religion’s teachings. To him, this was stymieing thenationalist cause.

Meanwhile, Tyndall’s nemesis within the postwar fascist milieu, Colin Jordan, waseven more extreme in his criticism of Christianity. For example, his book, Merry England2000, describes Christianity as ‘that sickly spiritual solvent from whence derivesthe whole ethos of liberalism, democracy, internationalism, multiracialism, socialism andcommunism; being the various formulae for the debility and destruction of the Aryanpeoples’.3 Such fulsome rejection leaves no scope for including Christianity in fascistideology. Indeed, for Jordan, fascism was a secular form of religious faith; Hitler tookover the mantle of the martyr in his worldview. We can see this development in his1989 essay celebrating 100 years since the birth of Hitler, ‘The Man Against Time’. ForJordan, Hitler’s wartime sacrifice meant that he was ‘the spiritual conqueror of thefuture’, and predicted his rise as a future saviour.4 The religious tropes employed here areclear, the traditional Christian religion’s sacrifice of Christ was transformed into Jordan’spolitical religion presenting Hitler as the great redeemer. He finished his essay thus:

This centenary is indeed for us a high time of meditation, a veritable sacrament of our faith inNational Socialism which always has been in the depth of its nature a political religion, andmust now have this quality brought to the surface and spread throughout its substance in orderto have the capacity to contest and conquer the future. As we focus our thoughts on the foun-der of our faith, embracing his spirit, we bring to life in memory all those who have lived anddied in his cause, holding hands with them, and likewise with all those today, wherever theyare, who actively serve that cause. Thus we create in comradeship of spirit a bridge of dedica-tion, past to present and present to future. In so doing, there comes to us in consequence anemission of the sacred flame which imbued him. Then, in that moment is born within us aninvincible renewal of the will to win. Heil! Hitler!5

Such extreme positions, sacralising politics by rejecting Christianity and embracingNeo-Nazism, are now out of favour, at least within the public discourse of contemporaryBritish fascism under the BNP.

Regarding the interest in religion taken by the latest incarnation of British fascism, thenews that several clergy were listed as members of the BNP on the leaked membershiplist suggests continued links between Christianity and fascism in Britain. Responding tothis news, the General Synod of the Church of England felt it necessary to place a banon clergy joining the BNP in 2008. Such action mirrors other denouncements and dis-tancing tactics developed by Christian Churches, who now feel the need to decry theBNPs politics as contrary to Christian ethics and morality. This is because, although thetrend of critiquing the Church has continued with the modern BNP, now British fascismis far more vocal about identifying itself with protestant Christianity. Nevertheless, likeTyndall, British fascists remain critical of Church leaders. Further, Islam is now used as ademonised ‘other’, thus anti-Semitism is largely replaced by Islamophobia.

To take a clear example of this trend, at once critical of organised Christianity andclaiming the religion for the party, the BNP’s website carries a news story from May2009 calling on its members to distribute a leaflet criticising the Church of England’s

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ability to safeguard Britain’s Christian heritage. ‘Britain stands at the abyss’, it asserts, andcontinues with the binary between ‘good’ Christianity and ‘bad’ Islam thus: ‘Our nation,identity and Christian ethos are being systematically destroyed by corrupt politicians,political correctness, aggressive Islamists and unwanted ⁄unneeded mass immigration...Our distinctive Christian heritage is disappearing as whole regions of Britain becomeIslamified.’ Claiming the Leadership of the Church of England is disconnected fromthe views of the masses, it concludes that:

The Church of England has consistently failed to live up to its sacred role as guardian of thesoul of the British people. For this reason, it falls to us in the British National Party to call for a‘‘National Day of Prayer’’. We urge everyone who loves Britain to pray for our national deliv-erance from the difficulties in which we currently find ourselves.6

This approach by the ostensibly more moderate and media savvy BNP contrasts with theopenly extreme views of Jordan and, to an extent, Tyndall too. Here, Christianityis clearly being claimed for fascism, as in the 1930s. Once again, we also see the typicalcritique of the establishment failing to speak for the wider population, a central aspectof fascism’s attempt style itself as a populist movement. In response to this trend, theDirector of the religious think tank Ekklesia, Jonathan Bartley, has countered the BNP’sclaims to be defending Christian culture in Britain thus: ‘the far right’s policies arecompletely at odds with the Christian faith. There does however appear to be a worryingtrend for the BNP to try and use religion in this way – and churches clearly have acrucial role to play in exposing their arguments (2010)’.

Aside from lobbying the Church of England with provocative leaflets, one of the mosttelling examples of the BNP’s appropriation of a Christian public profile has been thecreation of its religious front organisation, the Christian Council of Britain. This organisa-tion has been condemned not only by the Church of England, but also by the largerChurches Together in Britain and Ireland organisation.7 Its leading figure, ReverendRobert West, is a supply teacher and former Conservative councillor. Despite West’s reli-gious credentials being somewhat unclear, with no church willing to have claimed tohave ordained him,8 he is repeatedly photographed in ecclesiastical dress. Meanwhile, thewebsite of his CCB is clear on the fusion between British identity and Christianity:

The Christian faith is inextricably entwined with the very fabric of Britain, guiding our history,shaping the settlement patterns of our people, bequeathing a rich architectural heritage and pro-foundly influencing our very laws … Above and beyond all those very visible and tangibleaspects, the faith itself has helped define who we, the people of Britain are … Although themajority of English, Irish, Scots and Welsh no longer still attend church or recite prayers daily,the family of nations of these islands are still Christian nations.9

Demonstrating the value of his public profile to the party, in 2009, Robert West stoodfor the BNP in the European elections and in the Norwich North by-election. In therun-up to the former, he pronounced the compatibility between BNP policies and Chris-tianity thus:

I feel that I can endorse — from a Christian viewpoint — the BNP’s stance on race, immigra-tion, ethnicity and voluntary repatriation... Whilst the BNP is a secular and not a religiousparty, its views generally agree with the Bible’s own teaching that we are to live as nations, inour nations, and not to submit to a ‘‘resurrection’’ of the Babel thesis of one undifferentiatedmass under some form of, probably dictatorial and very unstable, world governance.10

The statement clearly uses religious themes to develop the party’s core message thatnations should not be mixed, and that Britain comprises a pure homogeneous nation that



needs to be protected from foreign infiltration. Once again, religious language and iden-tity is used to legitimise a fascist message.

We can see in the emergence of West, and the use of Christianity by the BNP, thatmodern British fascism has caught on to the theme of Christian identity as a synonym forBritishness and decide to pursue this strategy at some length. In a period in which Islamappears to pose a new threat to law and order, this religious agenda is very useful to theBNP, providing a clear method of contrasting ‘indigenous’ British with Asian communi-ties. Therefore, as in the interwar period, when Christianity could be used to contrast fas-cists with ‘alien’ Jews, so in contemporary British fascism, we once again see Christianityused to shore up a racist politics.

Conclusions

From this survey, it is clear that the relationship between Christianity and British fascismis a complex one. With the nascent fascism of the British Fascists, we saw religion usedto promote themes of national unity. Meanwhile, the IFL pronounced on aspects of theBible to shore up its complex anti-Semitism. For Leese, this was less about articulating aChristian politics per se than developing an anti-Semitic one. Contrastingly, with theBUF, we can see further trends in the relationship between fascism and religion, includ-ing interest among the lower clergy in fascism and the more conscious development ofChristian-influenced political religions. Further, interwar fascists could use a sense ofChristian heritage to contrast their politics with immigrant communities, especially Jews.

The postwar situation is more complex, as we see figures such as Tyndall and Jordancritiquing Christianity more fulsomely. For Tyndall, it was a source of nationaldecadence, while for Jordan, a sense of the numinous could be used to develop his ownsecular religion based on Hitler’s ‘sacrifice’. With this perspective, far more critical offorms of Christianity occurred at a time when the dominant fascist ‘other’, blackimmigrants, was racially rather than religiously defined. The final chapter in the story seesthe modern BNP once again embrace a consciously religious politics, although unlike theinterwar discourse, this is now used to distinguish the ‘Christian’ British from ‘alien’Muslims. Consequently, serious questions are being asked among those whose Christiancredentials are not in question regarding the authenticity of this latest trend among Britishfascists. To return to the question at the outset of this article, ‘What would Jesus do?’ it isworth bearing in mind the thoughts of the Vicar of Putney, Dr Giles Fraser (Williams2006). On the topic of The BNP’s new-found interest in Christianity, he observes thatgiven its stance on immigration, ‘if Jesus were ever to walk this green and pleasant land,the BNP would be committed to his repatriation’.

Short Biography

Having gained his PhD in September 2008, Dr Paul Jackson has lectured in History ata number of institutions, including Oxford Brookes University, the University ofNorthampton and the University of Huddersfield. Currently, he is an AssociateResearch Coordinator for Radicalism and New Media at the University of Northamp-ton, and teaches at the Open University. He has published widely, and his forthcomingbook is titled Modernist Patterns of Cultural Renewal in First World War Britain. Aside fromexpertise in British and European cultural history during the First World War, heco-edited two encyclopaedias covering the far-right, Historical Encyclopedia of WorldFascism (ABC Clio, 2006) and The Far Right in Europe: An Encyclopedia (Greenwood,

516 Paul Jackson


2008), and he currently co-edit’s the ‘Political Religions’ section of Wiley-Blackwell’sonline journal Religion Compass.

Notes

* Correspondence address: Paul Jackson, Division of History, University of Northampton, Boughton Green Road,Northampton NN7 7AL. E-mail: [email protected].

1 British Fascism, no. 4 (Sept 1930) p. 7.2 Mightier Yet! Back to Reality: The Policy of the Imperial Fascist League Outlined (London: Imperial Fascist League,1935) pp.24–5.3 Jordan, Merry England 2000 http://www.nationalistlibrary.com/index2.php?option=com_content&do_pdf=1&id=1331 [last accessed 01 ⁄ 10 ⁄ 2009].4 http://www.independent.co.uk/news/obituaries/colin-jordan-leading-figure-in-british-fascism-1675214.html [lastaccessed 01 ⁄ 10 ⁄ 2009].5 http://forums.skadi.net/archive/index.php/t-223.html [last accessed 01 ⁄ 10 ⁄ 2009].6 http://bnp.org.uk/2009/05/judas-archbishops-your-chance-to-strike-back/ [last accessed 01 ⁄ 10 ⁄ 2009].7 http://www.cofe.anglican.org/news/pr3306a.html [last accessed 12 ⁄ 03 ⁄ 2010].8 http://www.ekklesia.co.uk/blogs/jonathan_bartley/rev_robert_west [last accessed 01 ⁄ 10 ⁄ 2009].9 http://www.ccob.co.uk/ [last accessed 01 ⁄ 10 ⁄ 2009].10 http://bnp.org.uk/2009/04/the-bnp%E2%80%99s-reverend-robert-west-replies-to-the-church%E2%80%99s-anti-bnp-cranks/ [last accessed 01 ⁄ 10 ⁄ 2009].

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Extremes of Faith and Nation: British Fascism and Christianity