National Fascisti

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The National Fascisti were a splinter group from the British Fascisti formed in 1924. In the early days of the British Fascisti the movement lacked any real policy or direction and so this group split away with the intention of pursuing a more definite path towards a fascist state.

Members of the National Fascisti were dressed in black shirts in imitation of Benito Mussolini and his followers and received some military drilling, although membership was much too small for them to pose any real threat. Despite their frustrations at the lack of policy from the British Fascisti their own ideas were fairly banal, with vague calls for a government of experts being about as far as they went.

The group liked to pull stunts to get attention and in 1925 they hijacked a lorry carrying copies of the left-wing newspaper the Daily Herald which they proceeded to crash. The action briefly got them in the headlines but in the same year a series of internal struggles saw them change their name to the British National Fascisti under the leadership of Lieutenant Colonel H. Rippon-Seymour. Such a small group could not withstand internal wrangling and the movement faded from the scene fairly quickly after this.

Despite their general failure the National Fascisti remain significant for being the first group in British politics to attempt to develop Fascism as a specifically British ideology. They also helped to launch the political careers of William Joyce and Arnold Leese, both of whom had helped to instigate the split from the British Fascisti and who would both go on to greater significance.