Scottish politician and author (1899?1955)
Alexander Raven Thomson
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Born
| 3 December 1899
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Died
| 30 October 1955 (aged 55)
London, England
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Nationality
| Scottish
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Citizenship
| British
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Occupation
| Mechanical engineer
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Known for
| Fascist politician and writer
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Political party
| British Union of Fascists
,
Union Movement
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Spouse
| Lisbeth Rontgen
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Children
| Three
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Relatives
| Alexander Thomson
(grandfather)
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Alexander Raven Thomson
(3 December 1899 ? 30 October 1955), usually referred to as
Raven
, was a Scottish politician and philosopher. He joined the
British Union of Fascists
in 1933 and remained a follower of
Oswald Mosley
for the rest of his life. Thomson was considered to be the party's chief
ideologue
and has been described as the "
Alfred Rosenberg
of British fascism".
[1]
Early life
[
edit
]
Born in
Edinburgh
, Thomson came from a family long prominent in Scottish public life and was the grandson of the architect
Alexander Thomson
.
[2]
Thomson was educated in universities in his homeland, the United States and briefly
Heidelberg University
in Germany and studied mechanical engineering, science and philosophy.
[3]
In 1926, he became a partner in an engineering firm in London
[2]
specialising in the manufacture of silver paper, a process that he had learned in Germany.
[4]
During his studies in Germany, Thomson met and married Lisbeth, the daughter of the
X-ray
pioneer
Wilhelm Conrad Rontgen
.
[5]
They would go on to have three children together; Lisbeth already had a daughter from a previous relationship, and Thomson also had a long-term mistress, Olive Burdett.
[6]
Thomson's political career began by joining the
Communist Party of Great Britain
, but his membership did not last long since he rejected notions of
historical materialism
and moved more towards
corporatism
.
[3]
Thomson became a leading authority on the works of
Oswald Spengler
and in 1932 published the book
Civilization as Divine Superman: A Superorganic Philosophy of History
, which rejected Spengler's theories about the decline of civilisation and argued that it could be avoided by the rejection of
capitalism
and its replacement with
collectivism
.
[3]
In that conviction he was influenced by
Maurice Maeterlinck
, who had written of "insect communities" in which a communal spirit was shared by all members of a "hive".
[7]
The book also marked his drift towards a fascistic outlook.
[8]
British Union of Fascists
[
edit
]
He joined the
British Union of Fascists
in 1933 and soon rose to the post of Director of Policy. There, he became the leading ideological light in the party and a close associate of
Oswald Mosley
and
Neil Francis Hawkins
.
[9]
In that position, he produced his seminal work
The Corporate State
(March 1935, republished as
The Coming Corporate State
in January 1937) in which he set out the vision of a BUF government in Britain. Thomson envisaged the formation of 20
corporations
, each controlling a specific sector of the economy. The corporations would be further divided up to cover each individual industry and would also feed into a National Corporation, which would effectively form the government. Corporations would have equal representation for employers, workers and consumers, with elections to the corporations taking the place of existing political activity.
[10]
In 1935, he was sent to his native Scotland on a speaking tour designed to present the fascist message, but most of his engagements were disrupted by communist hecklers, including one at
Aberdeen
in which an extended chorus of
The Internationale
from the crowd effectively silenced the BUF speakers.
[11]
Thomson became a leading figure in the BUF and in 1937 represented the party in municipal elections in
Bethnal Green
(SW). He won 23.17% of the votes and finished ahead of the
Liberal
candidates.
[12]
Although he was not elected, the result marked a good total for the BUF. His status in the party now assured, Thomson became editor of the party weekly,
Action
, in 1939.
[13]
An important figure in the BUF, he served for a time as Mosley's representative to Germany, a role in which he was closely watched by
MI5
.
[14]
He shared with the
Nazis
a strong
anti-Semitism
[15]
and was generally noted as an admirer of
Nazi Germany
.
[16]
He was part of BUF delegation that attended the 1933
Nuremberg Rally
.
[17]
He made a total of five extended trips to Nazi Germany.
[18]
Despite being one of the public faces of the BUF, he had actually been interviewed by
The Jewish Chronicle
in 1934 and had told the newspaper that the group had no specific enmity towards the Jews.
[19]
Thomson also had loose connections to hardline
Revisionist Zionism
activist
Wolfgang von Weisl
, but they were curtailed after von Weisl's superior,
Ze'ev Jabotinsky
, told him to break off relations.
[20]
Mosley admired Thomson for his intellect
[21]
and would later describe him as an "honest man and devoted patriot"
[22]
but was also known to criticise him privately as something of a "yes-man".
[23]
In 1937, Thomson wrote that the
British left
had enforced "specifically Anglo-Saxon democratic methods of parliamentary governance" upon Ireland to which it was "entirely foreign and distasteful". Thomson also believed that a
United Ireland
would occur under fascism, an ideology that was less foreign to the "
native Celtic culture
".
[24]
After the outbreak of war, Thomson devised a plan to attack the
Nordic League
as "Nazi traitors" in the hope of establishing the BUF's patriotic credentials, but that came to nothing and actually ran alongside attempts by Francis Hawkins to establish BUF control over the League.
[25]
Along with most of the other leading members of the BUF, Thomson was detained under
Defence Regulation 18B
in May 1940 and interned for much of the
Second World War
.
[26]
He spent his entire jail spell in
Brixton Prison
, rather than the prison camp on the
Isle of Man
, which was generally more favourable, until his release in 1944.
[27]
Thomson reacted badly to his spell in detention and suffered a
nervous breakdown
during his incarceration.
[28]
He was released after he had been moved to a camp on the Isle of Man in September 1944.
[29]
Union Movement
[
edit
]
After his release Thomson set up a number of book clubs across Britain to ensure the continuing spread of Mosley's ideas.
[27]
The book clubs served as planning meetings for the future of Mosleyite politics after the war.
[30]
He also led the Union of British Freemen, a group he set up with the fellow ex-BUF member
Victor Burgess
in 1944 as an attempt to bring together former BUF members.
[31]
After the war, Thomson travelled regularly to Ireland to meet Mosley and to discuss political development.
[32]
Eager to expand the base of operations of fascism in Britain he also sought unsuccessfully to forge alliances with the proto-environmentalist
Rural Reconstruction Association
through the leading member
Jorian Jenks
, a former BUF activist, as well as individuals on the fringes of
Welsh nationalism
.
[33]
He joined the
Union Movement
on its foundation in 1948 and became a leading figure in the new party as both general secretary and the editor of the UM newspaper
Union
.
[27]
Playing a leading role in the development of the ideology of the UM, Thomson initially supported
Europe a Nation
enthusiastically, but soon tired of the esoteric policy and in 1950 organised a brief and even more unsuccessful return to
prewar policy
.
[34]
He then came to advocate a "left-wing fascist" approach and argued that the UM should target the working class for support with
anticapitalist
rhetoric.
[35]
As well as his important position within the UM domestically, Thomson was also a central figure in the party's international links. Thomson was sent to Spain in 1949 to try to build up support for Mosley in the country, but the trip was somewhat unsuccessful as he failed to impress the
falangists
and had to contend with the negative words of former BUF member
Angus Macnab
, who had grown to loathe Mosley.
[36]
Later, Thomson was central in liaising with the
New European Order
, a group with which Mosley had no official contact with because of his support for the
European Social Movement
.
[37]
Thomson's international reputation grew further in 1952 when he was appointed to the editorial board of the prestigious
Nation Europa
magazine.
[38]
He also became known as the publisher of Frederick J. Veale's
Advance to Barbarism
, one of the early pieces of Second World War
historical revisionism
[39]
and contributed to
The European
, a magazine edited by
Diana Mosley
.
Thomson continued to serve as leading UM figure until his death in 1955 from cancer.
[27]
Thomson, who had lived most of his life in the
East End of London
, had his funeral service at St Columba's Church,
Shoreditch
before he was cremated.
[40]
References
[
edit
]
- ^
R. Benewick,
Political Violence and Public Order
, London: Allan Lane, 1969, p. 117
- ^
a
b
Gavin Bowd,
Fascist Scotland: Caledonia and the Far Right
, Birlinn, 2013 p. 38
- ^
a
b
c
Benewick,
Political Violence and Public Order
, p. 117
- ^
Dorril,
Blackshirt
, p. 252
- ^
S. Dorril,
Blackshirt ? Sir Oswald Mosley and British Fascism
, London: Penguin, 2007, p. 252
- ^
Bowd,
Fascist Scotland
, pp. 210?211
- ^
Robert Skidelsky
,
Oswald Mosley
, Macmillan, 1981, p. 345
- ^
Bowd,
Fascist Scotland
, p. 39
- ^
Benewick, op cit, p. 117
- ^
Benewick, op cit, pp. 143?150
- ^
Bowd,
Fascist Scotland
, p. 45
- ^
Benewick,
Political Violence and Public Order
, pp. 279?282
- ^
Benewick,
Political Violence and Public Order
, p. 119
- ^
Dorril,
Blackshirt
, p. 317
- ^
Dorril,
Blackshirt
, p. 410
- ^
Richard Griffiths,
Fellow Travellers on the Right
, Oxford University Press, 1983, p. 55
- ^
Griffiths,
Fellow Travellers on the Right
, p. 172
- ^
Bowd,
Fascist Scotland
, p. 209
- ^
Skidelsky,
Oswald Mosley
, p. 385
- ^
Stein Ugelvik Larsen,
Fascism Outside Europe
, Columbia University Press, 2001, p. 379
- ^
Dorril,
Blackshirt
, p. 280
- ^
O. Mosley,
My Life
, London: Nelson, 1970, p. 332
- ^
Dorril,
Blackshirt
, p. 260
- ^
Douglas, R. M. (1997). "The Swastika and the Shamrock: British Fascism and the Irish Question, 1918-1940".
Albion: A Quarterly Journal Concerned with British Studies
.
29
(1): 57?75.
doi
:
10.2307/4051595
.
JSTOR
4051595
.
- ^
Dorril,
Blackshirt
, p. 493
- ^
Benewick,
Political Violence and Public Order
, p. 294
- ^
a
b
c
d
Biography at Friends of Oswald Mosley site (Archived version)
- ^
G. Macklin,
Very Deeply Dyed in Black
, New York: IB Tauris, 2007, p. 21
- ^
Bowd,
Fascist Scotland
, p. 212
- ^
Dorril,
Blackshirt
, p. 554
- ^
Macklin,
Very Deeply Dyed in Black
, p. 39
- ^
Dorril,
Blackshirt
, p. 553
- ^
Dorril,
Blackshirt
, pp. 585?6
- ^
Macklin,
Very Deeply Dyed in Black
, pp. 54?5
- ^
Macklin,
Very Deeply Dyed in Black
, p. 63
- ^
Macklin,
Very Deeply Dyed in Black
, p. 99
- ^
Macklin,
Very Deeply Dyed in Black
, p. 110
- ^
Macklin,
Very Deeply Dyed in Black
, p. 111
- ^
Macklin,
Very Deeply Dyed in Black
, p. 129
- ^
Bowd,
Fascist Scotland
, p. 248
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