The Nordic League (NL) was a

far-right Far-right politics, also referred to as the extreme right or right-wing extremism, are political beliefs and actions further to the right of the left–right political spectrum than the standard political right, particularly in terms of being ...

organisation in the

United Kingdom The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, commonly known as the United Kingdom (UK) or Britain, is a country in Europe, off the north-western coast of the continental mainland. It comprises England, Scotland, Wales and North ...

from 1935 to 1939 that sought to serve as a co-ordinating body for the various extremist movements whilst also seeking to promote

Nazism Nazism ( ; german: Nazismus), the common name in English for National Socialism (german: Nationalsozialismus, ), is the far-right totalitarian political ideology and practices associated with Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party (NSDAP) in Na ...

. The League was a private organisation that did not organise any public events.

Development

The Nordic League (NL) originated in 1935 when agents of

Alfred Rosenberg Alfred Ernst Rosenberg ( – 16 October 1946) was a Baltic German Nazi theorist and ideologue. Rosenberg was first introduced to Adolf Hitler by Dietrich Eckart and he held several important posts in the Nazi government. He was the head of ...

's ''

Nordische Gesellschaft The ''Nordische Gesellschaft'' ("Nordic Society") was an association founded in 1921, with the objective of strengthening German-Nordic cultural and political cooperation. It was based in Lübeck, Germany. The association had both German and Scan ...

'' arrived in Britain to establish a UK version of their movement. The main force behind this new group was Unionist MP

Archibald Maule Ramsay Archibald is a masculine given name, composed of the Germanic elements '' erchan'' (with an original meaning of "genuine" or "precious") and ''bald'' meaning "bold". Medieval forms include Old High German and Anglo-Saxon . Erkanbald, bishop o ...

who chaired the group's 14-man leadership council. The group's constitution described it as an "association of race conscious Britons" and sought to co-ordinate all far-right and

fascist Fascism is a far-right, Authoritarianism, authoritarian, ultranationalism, ultra-nationalist political Political ideology, ideology and Political movement, movement,: "extreme militaristic nationalism, contempt for electoral democracy and pol ...

movements whilst giving particular emphasis to

anti-Semitism Antisemitism (also spelled anti-semitism or anti-Semitism) is hostility to, prejudice towards, or discrimination against Jews. A person who holds such positions is called an antisemite. Antisemitism is considered to be a form of racism. Antis ...

. The League sought to unite leading figures from across the far right, as demonstrated in April 1939 when a meeting addressed by Ramsay was chaired by a member of the

British Union of Fascists The British Union of Fascists (BUF) was a British fascist political party formed in 1932 by Oswald Mosley. Mosley changed its name to the British Union of Fascists and National Socialists in 1936 and, in 1937, to the British Union. In 1939, fo ...

who was supported by former

British Fascists The British Fascists was the first political organisation in the United Kingdom to claim the label of fascist, although the group had little ideological unity apart from anti-socialism for much of its existence, and was strongly associated with c ...

president

R. B. D. Blakeney Robert Byron Drury Blakeney, generally known as R. B. D. Blakeney (18 April 1872 – 13 February 1952), was a British Army officer and fascist politician. After a career with the Royal Engineers, Blakeney went on to serve as President of the Bri ...

and Imperial Fascist League member E. H. Cole. Other leading members included

J. F. C. Fuller Major-General John Frederick Charles "Boney" Fuller (1 September 1878 – 10 February 1966) was a senior British Army officer, military historian, and strategist, known as an early theorist of modern armoured warfare, including categorising p ...

, the United Empire Fascist Party leader and Nazi agent Serocold Skeels,

Henry Hamilton Beamish Henry Hamilton Beamish (2 June 1873 – 27 March 1948) was a leading British antisemitic journalist and the founder of The Britons in 1919, the first organisation set up in Britain for the express purpose of diffusing antisemitic propaganda. Afte ...

, Arnold Leese and P. J. Ridout. The latter was credited with helping to popularise the NL's slogan "Perish Judah", which was frequently rendered "P.J." in public. BUF leader

Oswald Mosley Sir Oswald Ernald Mosley, 6th Baronet (16 November 1896 – 3 December 1980) was a British politician during the 1920s and 1930s who rose to fame when, having become disillusioned with mainstream politics, he turned to fascism. He was a member ...

, fearful of being too closely associated with the League's extremist rhetoric, did not join but he permitted party members to do so which the likes of Fuller, Robert Gordon-Canning and Oliver C. Gilbert did readily. As a result of these links the BUF was able to absorb the National Socialist Workers Party, a small group led by NL member Lieutenant-Colonel

Graham Seton-Hutchison Lieutenant-Colonel Graham Seton Hutchison (20 January 1890 – 3 April 1946)Harold Bloom, '' J. R. R. Tolkien's The lord of the rings'', Infobase Publishing, 2008, p. 38 was a British First World War army officer, military theorist, author of bo ...

Front groups

The NL was closely linked to the '' White Knights of Britain'', a secret society otherwise known as the Hooded Men with ritual initiation based on

Freemasonry Freemasonry or Masonry refers to fraternal organisations that trace their origins to the local guilds of stonemasons that, from the end of the 13th century, regulated the qualifications of stonemasons and their interaction with authorities ...

and compared to the

Ku Klux Klan The Ku Klux Klan (), commonly shortened to the KKK or the Klan, is an American white supremacist, right-wing terrorist, and hate group whose primary targets are African Americans, Jews, Latinos, Asian Americans, Native Americans, and ...

that was active from 1935 to 1937. The White Knights and the NL shared the same building as their headquarters. Another group, the

Militant Christian Patriots The Militant Christian Patriots (MCP) were a short-lived but influential anti-Semitic organisation active in the United Kingdom immediately prior to the Second World War. It played a central role in the ultimately unsuccessful attempts to keep the ...

, that was active after the

Munich Crisis The Munich Agreement ( cs, Mnichovská dohoda; sk, Mníchovská dohoda; german: Münchner Abkommen) was an agreement concluded at Munich on 30 September 1938, by Germany, the United Kingdom, France, and Italy. It provided "cession to Germany ...

urging

Neville Chamberlain Arthur Neville Chamberlain (; 18 March 18699 November 1940) was a British politician of the Conservative Party who served as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from May 1937 to May 1940. He is best known for his foreign policy of appeasemen ...

not to become involved in a "

Jew Jews ( he, יְהוּדִים, , ) or Jewish people are an ethnoreligious group and nation originating from the Israelites Israelite origins and kingdom: "The first act in the long drama of Jewish history is the age of the Israelites""Th ...

ish war", was also closely connected to the NL and said by

MI5 The Security Service, also known as MI5 ( Military Intelligence, Section 5), is the United Kingdom's domestic counter-intelligence and security agency and is part of its intelligence machinery alongside the Secret Intelligence Service (MI6), G ...

to be a front organisation. By using this group and another front organisation, the Liberty Restoration League, the NL was able to ensure that high-ranking figures such as

the Duke of Wellington Arthur Wellesley, 1st Duke of Wellington, (1 May 1769 – 14 September 1852) was an Anglo-Irish soldier and Tory statesman who was one of the leading military and political figures of 19th-century Britain, serving twice as prime minister of ...

, the Duchess of Hamilton, Baron Brocket, and

Michael O'Dwyer Michael Francis O'Dwyer (28 April 1864 – 13 March 1940) was an Irish Indian Civil Service (ICS) officer and later the Lieutenant Governor of Punjab, British India, between 1913 and 1919. During O'Dwyer's tenure as Punjab's Lieutenant Gove ...

became involved in their movement.

Response and demise

The NL came under increasing scrutiny after

Kristallnacht () or the Night of Broken Glass, also called the November pogrom(s) (german: Novemberpogrome, ), was a pogrom against Jews carried out by the Nazi Party's (SA) paramilitary and (SS) paramilitary forces along with some participation from ...

, particularly for the violence of Ramsay,

William Joyce William Brooke Joyce (24 April 1906 – 3 January 1946), nicknamed Lord Haw-Haw, was an American-born fascist and Nazi propaganda broadcaster during the Second World War. After moving from New York to Ireland and subsequently to England, J ...

and

A. K. Chesterton Arthur Kenneth Chesterton (1 May 1899 – 16 August 1973) was a British far-right journalist and political activist. From 1933 to 1938, he was a member of the British Union of Fascists (BUF). Disillusioned with Oswald Mosley, he left the ...

in their anti-Semitic speeches. Others such as Elwin Wright, who until 1937 was secretary of the

Anglo-German Fellowship The Anglo-German Fellowship was a membership organisation that existed from 1935 to 1939, and aimed to build up friendship between the United Kingdom and Germany. It was widely perceived as being allied to Nazism. Previous groups in Britain wit ...

, called for the shooting of Jews, whilst Commander E. H. Cole condemned the

House of Commons The House of Commons is the name for the elected lower house of the bicameral parliaments of the United Kingdom and Canada. In both of these countries, the Commons holds much more legislative power than the nominally upper house of parliament. ...

as being full of "bastardised Jewish swine". However, such extremist language worked against the NL because its speakers were seen by the public at large as quite mad and so their pro-

appeasement Appeasement in an international context is a diplomatic policy of making political, material, or territorial concessions to an aggressive power in order to avoid conflict. The term is most often applied to the foreign policy of the UK governm ...

arguments were ignored. Following the outbreak of the

Second World War World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposin ...

, two leading members, T. Victor-Rowe and Oliver Gilbert, were

interned Internment is the imprisonment of people, commonly in large groups, without charges or intent to file charges. The term is especially used for the confinement "of enemy citizens in wartime or of terrorism suspects". Thus, while it can simply ...

, and the NL largely went into abeyance, with members joining other, more public, anti-war groups. The League had officially disbanded as soon as war was declared although it continued to meet secretly at Gilbert's house until his arrest in late September 1939. Two of its members, Joyce and Margaret Bothamley, left Britain for

Nazi Germany Nazi Germany (lit. "National Socialist State"), ' (lit. "Nazi State") for short; also ' (lit. "National Socialist Germany") (officially known as the German Reich from 1933 until 1943, and the Greater German Reich from 1943 to 1945) was ...

after the outbreak of war. Given the association of the NL with Nazism, BUF organiser Alexander Raven Thomson even suggested that Mosley publicly denounce the League as traitors in an attempt to present a more patriotic image, although

Defence Regulation 18B Defence Regulation 18B, often referred to as simply 18B, was one of the Defence Regulations used by the British Government during and before the Second World War. The complete name for the rule was Regulation 18B of the Defence (General) Regula ...

came into force before this could be attempted.

References

Bibliography

* * *

External links

Spartacus on the Nordic LeagueChronicles of the British Far Right on the White Knights of Britain and Nordic League
{{Authority control Antisemitism in the United Kingdom Far-right politics in the United Kingdom Nazi Party organizations Political organisations based in the United Kingdom Secret societies in the United Kingdom