Did you know that Britain's most famous Nazi was once a Dulwich-based young Conservative?
William Joyce, was born in New York to a Southern Irish loyalist family. According to Martin Pugh: 'After his family settled in Dulwich in 1923 he joined the Junior Imperial League, the youth organisation of the Conservative Party, but he felt betrayed by the British establishment for abandoning the Union with Ireland. Increasingly consumed with hatred towards Catholics, Communists and Jews, he saw fascism as the best means of prosecuting his crusade against his and the nation's enemies' (Hurrah for the Blackshirts! Fascists and Fascism in Britain between the Wars).
Pugh states that Joyce joined the British Fascists in December 1923, though he seems to have been active in Conservative politics for longer. After becoming prominent in Mosley's British Union of Fascists (a different organisation from the earlier BF), Joyce left for Germany in 1938. From there he famously broadcast Nazi propaganda, earning the nickname Lord Haw Haw. He was executed in 1946 for treason. So his youthful ambition of becoming the Conservative MP for Chelsea was not to be realized!
A number of sites refer to the story that his family home at 7 Allison Grove, SE21, was one of the first hit by a German bomb in the early days of the Blitz. Whether this is true or folklore I am not sure.
See also: Pro-fascist Tories in 1930s Lewisham
Actually, "Lord Haw-Haw" left England for Germany in August 1939, just a few days before the outbreak of war; not in 1938, as stated in your blog. It is widely believed that he left in a hurry because a former acquaintance of his who was now working for MI5 tipped him off that he was on a blacklist of people to be arrested as soon as war was declared.
ReplyDeleteNow lets recall what the British establishment on Jersey and the other Islands did when the Germans goose steped into town
ReplyDeleteyes introduce Nazi laws, sent every Jewish person to the concentration camps
So much for loyal Government
only the Communist party and the local branch of the TGWU union put up any resistance
resistance condemed by the same establsihment after the War
infact
Jersey and the other Islnds were the only places in Europe that had the same governments before, during and after the war
No de nazification or penalties for Nazi collaboration
Long live the memory of Norman Le Brocq and the Jersey resistance movement
Utter crap 'anonymous'...get back to your socialist worker stand in the high street.
ReplyDelete