Henry Hamilton Beamish
Henry Hamilton Beamish (2 June 1873 - 27 March 1948) was a leading British antisemite and the founder of The Britons.
The son of an admiral who had served as an A.D.C. to Queen Victoria, Beamish served in the Second Boer War and settled in South Africa afterwards. However he left the country having decided that the Jews held too much influence there.[1]
Returning to London in 1918, Beamish set up The Britons as a specifically antisemitic propaganda organisation and also became involved with the Silver Badge Party. He ran as an independent in a 1918 by-election in Clapham on an anti-immigrant platform, supported by right-wing MP Noel Pemberton Billing, but did not win, receiving 43% of the votes cast.[2] Along with Lieutenant-Commander E.M. Frazer, Beamish produced a poster in 1919 denouncing Commissioner of Works Sir Alfred Mond (Alfred Mond, 1st Baron Melchett) as a traitor. This poster resulted in a libel suit filed by Mond, who was successful and was awarded £5000, although Beamish left Britain without paying.[3] Following his departure from Britain, Beamish travelled the world preaching antisemitism. He was one of the earliest developers of the Madagascar Plan for Jewish deportation. He spoke in Germany where he claimed, rather dubiously, to have taught Adolf Hitler.[4] In the early 1920s Beamish announced that "Bolshevism was Judaism."[5] He served as Vice-President of the Imperial Fascist League for a time[6] and was a member of the Nordic League.[7]
Eventually he settled in Southern Rhodesia, where he served as an independent MP and was interned in 1940 for his pro-Nazi sentiments.[8] He remained President of The Britons until his death in Southern Rhodesia in 1948.
References
- ↑ Richard Griffiths, Fellow Travellers on the Right, Oxford University Press, 1983, p. 61
- ↑ The Times, 22 June 1918
- ↑ Philip Hoare, Oscar Wilde's Last Stand, Arcade Publishing (1998), p. 212
- ↑ Griffiths, Fellow Travellers on the Right, p. 98
- ↑ James Webb (1976): Occult Establishment: The Dawn of the New Age and The Occult Establishment, (Open Court Publishing), p. 130, ISBN 0-87548-434-4
- ↑ R. Thurlow, Fascism in Britain: A History, 1918-1985, Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1987, p. 70
- ↑ Richard Thurlow, Fascism in Britain: A History, 1918-1985, Basil Blackwell, 1987, p. 80
- ↑ Herbert Arthur Strauss, Hostages of Modernization: Studies on Modern Antisemitism, 1870-1933/39, Walter de Gruyter (1993), p. 303, ISBN 3-11-010776-7
Bibliography
- Robert Benewick, Political Violence and Public Order, London, 1969
