blackisthelight

The role of Irish immigrants in British fascism has been downplayed over the years, often by people eager to remember the Irish who were involved in the antifascist movements during the 1930’s and unwilling to confront the complicated nature of a colonised people engaging in ultra-nationalist movements on behalf of the coloniser. Hope Not Hate’s Matthew Collins remarked in an interview with the Irish Times that “It’s a well-known fact that during the 1980s, almost everyone in the National Front came from an Irish family.” I think that this phenomenon is worthy of further study.

The interwar period was a time of immense political upheaval and Ireland and its diaspora were as divided as any other Europeans. Like most fascist movements, the British Union of Fascists (BUF) was a cross-class movement with its leadership typically coming from the more educated and well-connected classes. One compatriot of William Joyce (or Lord Haw-Haw as he became known during the war) was Norah Dacre Fox, aka Norah Elam. Norah was born in Dublin in 1878 to John Doherty, a successful businessman from Donegal and his wife Charlotte, from a Protestant middle-class Dublin family. John was involved in nationalist politics with Parnell and the Home Rule Party in Dublin before moving the family to London when Norah was ten where he became a local politician with the Liberal Party. Norah married Charles Dacre Fox in 1909 and took his surname but the marriage did not last long.

Dacre Fox became involved with the suffragette movement in her early 30s in the pre-Great War years and quickly rose through the ranks of the Women’s Social and Political Union (WSPU), founded by Emmeline Pankhurst, to become General Secretary. She became one of their most capable public speakers at often rowdy meetings (many of which she organised) which were held under threat of attack by the police or other opponents. Dacre Fox was also a prolific writer and contributed many articles to the Suffragette Newspaper as one of the few authors writing under their own name. These were skills she would later adapt to fascist organising as a BUF member. Dacre Fox was jailed three times for her suffragist activities and supported militant action. During one of her trials she disrupted proceedings with a speech that included the lines:

I want to know why women like us should be standing in this police-court today, when scoundrels are allowed to go through the country destroying the minds and bodies of little children. Why do you not prosecute these men? Why should you prosecute us women, whose only crime is that we stand for the downtrodden, sexually, economically, and politically? The whole thing is a travesty and a farce; it has become a public scandal.

Her time in jail, where she engaged in a hunger strike, had an impact on her and reinforced her willingness to fight against what she saw as a corrupt system.

Here in the 20th century men can still conceive that this is civilization and they are prepared to go on with the present system, which no words can describe. Whoever gets into that prison, perhaps people not all bad, are likely to be turned out dangerous criminals. So far as I am concerned, I remember the words of Ernest Jones the Chartist. He said, ‘I went into prison a Chartist. I came out a revolutionary.’ I went into prison a Militant Suffragette. I came out fifty militants rolled into one.

The suffrage movement wound up at the start of the Great War as most of the leadership, including Dacre Fox, urged an end to suffragette activities and threw their support behind the patriotic militarism of the establishment that led to millions of dead on the battlefields of Europe. The WSPU took a rightward turn during the war, criticizing trade unions and attacking German immigrants. Dacre Fox embraced this anti-German sentiment and was part of a movement to intern and deport all German or German descended residents from Britain. Dacre Fox and Emmeline Pankhurst also worked closely with Nancy Astor in 1914, the first female MP to take her seat in Westminster, who later became known for her antisemitism and support for national socialism.

Dacre Fox’s apparent concern for the downtrodden also extended to animal rights, something which remained a life-long concern. After the first world war, she limited her activism to the anti-vivisection movement. She was a prominent member of the London and Provincial Anti-Vivisection Society (LPAVS). Though this group she became involved in a milieu of vegetarianism, alternative medicine and anti-vaccination ideas which included theosophical and Christian Science groups. This movement arose partly as a backlash against modernity and scientific rationalism, and it included many well-off women in parallels not dissimilar to the Covid-19 era. Much of the response from the medical establishment at the time was sexist and dismissive of legitimate criticisms, leading to further entrenchment of people who felt they had been mistreated. As the BUF expanded in the 1930’s, many of the LPAVS were drawn into their activities, and the group was kept under surveillance by the police for suspicion of being a BUF front.

Norah and her partner, Dudley Elam, became involved in the British Union of Fascists in the early 30’s and Norah began using her oratorial skills for campaigning on behalf of Oswald Mosley’s party, frequently appearing alongside William Joyce in the Sussex area before his expulsion from the party in 1937. Dacre Fox (referred to as Elam from now on) claims to not have liked Joyce, and they had very different views on Ireland with Elam supporting Irish independence and opposing Unionism in marked contrast to Joyce who had assisted the Black and Tans as a teenager and hated Irish nationalism. Elam’s activities mostly consisted of speeches and writing alongside other organisational work. Street-fighting at public meetings was common as the BUF tried to build enough power to impose its antisemitic fascist policies onto British society but met stiff resistance from targeted groups. In 1936 Elam was announced as a future BUF candidate for Northampton. The BUF paper Action described their candidate as a “popular and well-known Fascist propagandist.” The BUF was happy to use Elam as proof that it was not a sexist or misogynistic outfit with Mosley announcing that “it killed for all time the suggestion that National Socialism proposed putting British women back into the home.” Eleven of the eighty BUF candidates announced for the election were women, a high percentage for the time. Elam became a prolific writer for the Blackshirt newspaper and used her suffragette background to rail against the deficiencies of the democracy she now wished to dismantle, seeing fascism as a completion of the emancipatory project of the suffragettes. This sentiment was echoed by William Joyce in his National Socialism Now pamphlet. Writing in 1936, her disillusionment with party politics and her antisemitic conspiracism were evident in an article penned for the BUF journal Action:

Seeing that party women once again wear the primrose in the memory of the Jew Disraeli, the rosette in honour of Sir Herbert Samuel, the red emblem in commemoration of Karl Marx; they have turned again as handmaidens to the hewing of wood and drawing of water for the party wirepullers, and they add to all this futility the cross upon the ballot paper once in every five years.

In spite of her anti-German campaigning during the first World War, Elam was part of the BUF inner circle which grew increasingly pro-German as the Second World War approached, and she was involved in meetings between various far-right groups such as the Right Club and Link as the war grew close. Under surveillance by MI5, the Elams were part of the first BUF contingent interned on 23rd of May 1940 under the 18B regulations.

After the war, Elam, grew distant from the remains of the BUF but remained friendly with Mary Allen, another suffragette who might be considered trans by today’s standards, and Arnold Leese, an extreme antisemite to the right of Mosley who had led the Imperial Fascist League in the 1930s (and was mentoring Colin Jordan, later of the National Socialist Movement during this period.) All three shared an interest in animal welfare. Leese was a noted camel doctor and combined his interest in animal welfare with antisemitism by attacking traditional Jewish meat preparation, a tactic more recently replicated by Islamophobic groups. Allen had organised the formation of women’s police forces in the 1920’s and had met Eoin O’Duffy in 1926 at an international police conference where he had left a strong impression on her. Elam adopted an attitude of Holocaust denial after the war which she attempted to pass on to her family, with whom she was frequently bad-tempered and abusive. Norah Elam died in London in 1961 aged 83.

Elam’s story is worth recounting as an example of the interests that many of the interwar fascists had that might seem unfamiliar to a casual modern observer. Feminism, environmentalism and animal rights have come to be almost solely associated with left and liberal politics, but this was certainly not the case in the interwar period, and there is no reason to believe they might not play a role in any present or future fascist organising. Part of this myopia comes from viewing fascism as solely coming from the right and concerned with returning to a mythical past. It is that, but can simultaneously be proposing a brave new future, as circumstances allow, and take on surprising, modern forms. As the consequences of climate collapse become more apparent, it is likely that new forms of fascism will emerge to take advantage of the situation and may adopt unexpected configurations. The purported defence of innocent animals from alien cultures as done by Elam can be used to legitimise violence against a minority group, and attacking Halal practices as barbaric has become one of the staples of Islamophobic organising in the 21st century. Single-issue activists such as animal rights groups or environmental campaigners who ‘put differences aside’ to work with fascists almost certainly doom their projects to failure once hate groups gain a foothold. By recognising the anti-vaccination attitudes of the interwar period as mirroring those of the modern far-right, perhaps a wider understanding of the malleability of fascism to adapt or colonise issues not typically seen as their central concerns might be gained and avoided.

Sources: Brazell, Emma (2019) Theresa May under fire after unveiling statue of ‘Nazi-sympathising’ MP, Metro, 9 November 2019

Connelly, Katherine (2013) Sylvia Pankhurst London: Pluto Press

Durham, Martin (1992) Gender and the British Union of Fascists. Journal of Contemporary History, July 1992

Durham, Martin (1998) Women and Fascism London: Routledge

Elam, Norah (1936) Women and the Vote. Action, No. 6, 26 March 1936

Gottlieb, Julie V. Feminine Fascism – Women in Britain’s Fascist Movement 1923-1945 London: I.B. Tauris

Heaney, Mick (2022) ‘In the 1980s, almost everyone in the National Front came from an Irish family’ Irish Times Oct 17 2022

Joyce, William (1937) National Socialism Now London

Macklin, Graham (2020) Failed Führers London: Routledge

McPherson, Angela and McPherson, Susan (2010). Mosley’s Old Suffragette – A Biography of Norah Dacre Fox Lulu.com

Pankhurst, Emmeline (1914) Suffragette – My Own Story. London: Hesperus Classics (2015 Reprint)

Thurlow, Richard (1998) Fascism in Britain – A History 1918-1998 London: I.B Tauris