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English Array was a fascist British group founded and led by Lord Lymington.

Foundation

In 1930, the English Mistery was founded by William Sanderson. Sanderson was by all accounts a "difficult" man to deal with, and by 1935 the Mistery was being divided into two factions, one loyal to Sanderson and another to Lymington.[1] The breaking point occurred when Lymington's first marriage ended in divorce in 1936 on the grounds of unfaithfulness on his part and he promptly married his mistress.[1] Sanderson felt that Lymington's behavior was not proper for the "chief syndic" of the Mistery and asked to resign.[1] The majority of the members of the Mistery followed Lymington who founded the English Array while Sanderson remained the leader of a rump Mistery.[2] The ideology of the English Array was precisely the same as the English Mistery while the other differences being that the new leader was Lymington.[3]

Like the English Mistery, the English Array featured elaborate symbols such as the red rose set on the St. George's flag along with elaborate titles as the English Array was led by "Marshals" whose areas corresponded to the counties of England.[4] As suggested by its name, the English Array identified with England instead of Britain and did not operate in the Celtic lands of Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. The British historian Martin Pugh wrote that the "English Array was Gothic in style and frankly reactionary in inspiration".[4] Like the English Mistery, the English Array did not accept women as members.[4] The English Array saw the end of the feudal system in England as the greatest disaster that ever befell the English people, and longed to restore a highly idealised vision of the Middle Ages with the English people united in deference to the king and the aristocracy.[4]

Activities

The center of the English Array was Farleigh Wallop, the estate of Lymington in the Hampshire countryside.[3] The English Array maintained contacts with other groups such as the British Union of Fascists led by Sir Oswald Mosely to the Kinship in Husbandry led by Rolf Gardiner.[3] The Conservative MP Reginald Dorman-Smith was one of the English Mistery members who left to join the English Array.[5] Dorman-Smith joined the cabinet in January 1939 as minister of agriculture, which gave the English Array hopes that their vision would soon be realised.[5] The English Array was a "back-to-the-land" movement and called for the deurbanisation of Britain.[6] Alongside the calls for a rural society to led both politically and economically by the aristocracy was an ecologist message about preserving the environment and promoting organic farming.[6] The clearest expression of the ideology of the English Array was the 1938 book Famine in England by Lymington, which contained praise for the concentration camps of Nazi Germany, the "white northern races" of Europe and the beauty of English countryside along with attacks on the "scum" and "aliens" in England and "international finance".[7] Gardiner who like most of the other members of the English Mistery left in 1936 to join the English Array was very active in settling up "National Service Camps" designed to train the future elite of the English Array who would take over Britain once democracy collapsed.[5]

The ideology of the English Array was very strongly influenced by the "blood-and-soil" ideas of the Völkisch movement in Germany.[8] Like the völkisch activists in the Reich, the English Array linked race to the landscape with healthy landscapes equating healthy bodies and healthy races..[8] Lymington believed that the Industrial Revolution along with the accompanying urbanisation were disasters for Britain as it caused a "racial degeneration", which only be stopped by a return of the population to the rural areas.[8] Lymington wrote: "The conviction that the healthy state of the soil is the foundation of human health as well of that of the crops and animals is one that does not need any explanation for the men of the English Array...If we serve our soil, we can bring back the fertility of the strong breeds that will people the Empire with the desired men and women who will hold it against tides of yellow men and brown".[8] Lymington called for a protectionist policy designed to keep foreign agricultural products out of British markets via high tariffs while agriculture would be made the center of the British economy via state subsides and land banks.[9] Like the English Mistery, the English Array was anti-Semitic and depicted Jews as "eternal foreigners" who could never be English under any conditions.[10] The English Array believed that the English people were a race whose bloodlines needed to be protected from foreigners, which led for the group to be strongly anti-immigrant.[4] As part of "back-to-the-land" ideology, members of the English Array were encouraged to move to rural areas and engage in organic farming.[4] A major concern for the English Array was stopping the sale of pasteurised milk, which seen as a deadly health threat to the English.[4]

Lymington favored an absolute monarchy for Britain as he stated that for the English Array: "We speak of our Sovereign Lord the King. The phrase enshrines the deepest political instinct we have. It is not a sentiment of wishfulness; it is the strength which binds us back to our ancestors and drives us forward to build the future with purpose from binding back. It has two sides, mystical and practical".[11] The English Array was openly opposed to democracy and any man wanting to join the English Array had to take the following oath: "I have faith in the surviving stock of my own people. I have love for them and for the English soil from which I have sprung. I have hope that though the regeneration of that stock and its soil. I hate the system of democracy which is in effect a tyranny that dupes men by allowing them to agitate in Hyde Park while it refuses them the right to be responsible for their own family".[4]

Like the English Mistery, the English Array was anti-Semitic and depicted Jews as "eternal foreigners" who could never be English under any conditions.[10] The English Array believed that the English people were a race whose bloodlines needed to be protected from foreigners, which for the group to be strongly anti-immigrant.[4] AS part of "back-to-the-land" ideology, members of the English Array were enouraged to move to rural areas and engage in organic farming.[4] A major concern for the English Array was stopping the sale of pasteurised milk, which seen as a deadly health threat to the English.[4] The English Array supported the Nationalists in the Spanish Civil War and accepted at face value the claim that the botched military coup d'état of 18 July 1936 was necessary to forestall a planned Communist coup.[12] Lymington wrote: "About Spain it is only necessary to say that Franco's is not a military rebellion, but a popular uprising against great material odds to save Spain from a foreign planned Communist revolution".[12] In its writings on European affairs, the English Array was very pro-Nazi and consistently portrayed the Third Reich in a positive light.[13]

Dissolution

In August 1939 at the height of the Danzig crisis, Lymington sent out a message to the English Array reading "should there be a war, it must be treated as an interval in full Array activities".[14] In October 1939 edition of the Array's journal The New Pioneer, Lymington complained about the "fratricide" in Europe which only served the Soviet Union.[14] The marked similarity of ideas of the English Array to the National Socialists in Germany was much noted at the time, and led Lymington to dissolve the English Array in 1940 as he feared he would be interned as a fascist..[15]

Books and articles

  • Dietz, Bernhard (2018). Neo-Tories The Revolt of British Conservatives Against Democracy and Political Modernity (1929-1939). London: Bloomsbury Publishing. ISBN 9781472570031.
  • Griffiths, Richard (1980). Fellow Travellers of the Right British Enthusiasts for Nazi Germany, 1933-9. Oxford: Oxford University Press. ISBN 0094634602.
  • Pugh, Martin (2013). Hurrah For The Blackshirts! Fascists and Fascism in Britain Between the Wars. New York: Random House. ISBN 9781448162871.
  • Stone, Daniel (June 2003). "The English Mistery, the BUF, and the Dilemmas of British Fascism". The Journal of Modern History. 75 (2): 336–358.

References

  1. ^ a b c Stone 2003, p. 344.
  2. ^ Stone 2003, p. 344-345.
  3. ^ a b c Stone 2003, p. 345.
  4. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k Pugh 2013, p. 72.
  5. ^ a b c Dietz 2018, p. 69.
  6. ^ a b Stone 2003, p. 345-346.
  7. ^ Stone 2003, p. 347.
  8. ^ a b c d Dietz 2018, p. 70.
  9. ^ Dietz 2018, p. 70-71.
  10. ^ a b Dietz 2018, p. 132.
  11. ^ Dietz 2018, p. 110.
  12. ^ a b Dietz 2018, p. 186.
  13. ^ Griffiths 1980, p. 321.
  14. ^ a b Dietz 2018, p. 205.
  15. ^ Dietz 2018, p. 71.
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